Radio Soulwax: The Final Mix and its Twenty-Three Predecessors

December 12, 2014 9:34 PM

Seven months ago Steven and David Dewaele, better known as Belgian electronic duo and mashup kings Soulwax / 2manyDJs, put the finishing touches on their "Radio Soulwax" Project. In addition to being the band's nom-de-tour, RS has existed for the past several years as a series of mixes-and-music-videos. For this last hurrah, the Dewaeles released a video for the complete 2002 album that made them famous, As Heard On Radio Soulwax, Part Two. The film GIF- and Terry Gilliam-ifies hundreds of album covers, and can be seen here [NSFW in spots]. Inside, find a complete list of the RS mixes with the band's comments on each one.

The mixes are listed in chronological order of posting to Vimeo, although this appears to reverse the order of the "This Is Belgium" tracks.

1. Coverversioncovers: "[T]his is a mix of some of the nicest and oddest cover versions we have found over the years."
2. Under The Covers, Volume One: "For the last few years we have been touring as 2manydjs with a show called 'Under The Covers' where a giant screen behind us shows the animated sleeves of the respective songs..."
3. Introversy: "Some of our favorite intros (420 to be exact) are in this mix we did for BBC Radio1 a while ago."
4. Librarian Girl: "[F]ortunately many the old [library music] records were played and recorded by some of the best session musicians during their downtime, so there are some incredible gems to be found."
5. Mehari: "[W]e were appalled by the music [on Ibiza]... [s]o we decided to make our own soundtrack to the white island by burning these compilations of slightly darker electronic music from different eras with a similar sound and kept listening to them whilst driving around."
6. Blue: "This is a collection of sad and beautiful songs, the kind that will make you even more sad. It's the mixtape you want to give to the person who will eventually break your heart but will keep the tape."
7. Mehari Two: "Second part of the Mehari series, where we go slightly darker and a lot faster, this one is destined for high speed drives through the hills of your Balearic island of choice, but preferably in that type of car."
8. Axe Attack: "If you ever wondered how many guitar riffs would fit in an hour, we can tell you it's about 500."
9. Nothing Worse Than A Bad Rap: "Remember when rap was just rap, and not hip hop? Just a guy with mic talking the song? Everyone had to have a 'rap' record... maybe not everyone should have made one."
10. Celestial Voyage, Part One: "Welcome to outer space! This is the first installment of a trip through the galaxies featuring some of our favorite space-related tracks, usually of the 'disco' kind."
11. Jack In The Box: "Somewhere down the line, House music has lost the balls it displayed in these [1984-1989 Chicago] Trax and we love how raw and messed up these guys made their records sound with so few tools, so this is an homage to the pioneers of that era."
12. Hardcore or Die: "Using [our friends'] records and [our drummer, Steve's] tapes (of local hardcore radio shows from northern France), we tried to give you our take on 80s hardcore. Some people might feel it's not very respectful, but listen, those guys take themselves way too seriously and by cutting it up the way we did, we feel we have kept to the original spirit and energy of the music."
13. Into The Vortex: "Enter the Vortex, don't be afraid (and don't operate heavy machinery!)."
14. This Is Belgium, Part Two: Cherry Moon On Valium: "[20 years ago] this was the devil's music for us, but we have learned to listen through the claps and distorted kicks and discovered that if you slow these really dark and heavy techno records down all the way to about 115 bpm, it suddenly makes them sound less frantic, ballsier and a lot sexier." (Previously)
15. Celestial Voyage, Part Two: "We recommend you watch and dance to this hour in a darkened room without any distractions."
16. Under The Covers, Volume Two: "This tour took us all over the world, we played 130 UTC shows in 32 countries over a period of 2 years and it was also the starting point for RSWX."
17. This Is Belgium, Part One: New Beat: "There was a brief period between 1987 and 1989 where... a whole [generation of Belgians'] lives quite rapidly became based around taking ecstasy, dressing up, going clubbing and dancing to an odd, slowed down hypnotic mix of New Wave, Acid, EBM and everything else that sounded good."
18. D&SCO: "There might be different types of it in this hour, but it's all disco as far as we're concerned."
19. Pin Ups: "We sometimes buy records just for their covers...this is particularly true of our extensive collection of records with sexy ladies on." [NSFW]
20. Under The Covers, Volume Three: "The third leg in a trilogy of hours that contain animations we made for our Under The Covers live DJ show, this one is decidedly more danceable."
21. Benelux: "As with many European countries, there are a lot of little gems stemming from [Belgium, The Netherlands, and Luxembourg] over various decades that you have possibly never heard before, but really should!"
22. Batuta Discos: "We show our love for Brazil and all its musical forms over various decades here in this mix."
23. Dave: "We've included all things Bowie, whether that is original songs, covers, backing vocals, production work or reworks we made, to attempt to give you the full scope of the man's genius."

posted by Going To Maine (4 comments total)

Has it already been twelve years since that came out? Wow, time flies. It was fun to listen to it again, and I do think it has held up well. This might have been my introduction to mash-ups, with it layering different tracks and not just stitching them together end to end.
posted by bjrn at 7:08 AM on December 13, 2014

Yes!
posted by capricorn at 7:27 AM on December 13, 2014

Thanks. I went for the Cherry Moon On Valium. Just what it said on the box. Lotsa kickin, lotsa clappin and lotsa fun.
posted by vicx at 2:37 AM on December 14, 2014

Holy shit! I had no idea! Thanks!!
posted by eggkeeper at 10:29 PM on December 19, 2014