The singer has become a deejay

Resident Advisor has released a podcast with David and Stephen Dewaele today. This episode is just over one hour long, and the brothers talk about the new Soulwax album ‘All Systems Are Lying’, their legacy as artists and remixers, the ‘Indiesleaze’ revival and much more.

You can listen to the whole show below, but here are a few interesting bits about recording the new album:

• Dave and Steph only set one parameter when they started making music for the new Soulwax album ‘Write better songs’.
• Most of the time while writing the new songs, it was a stream of consciousness.
• ‘Run Free‘ started very simple and Steph wrote the lyrics in one go, on his first attempt, on the notepad of his iPhone. Also he recorded the vocals as a voicenote on his iPhone and this take was eventually used on the track.
• The first couple of songs or ideas for songs were very piano driven because Steph got a piano for his birthday at home. And then they realised ‘oh we need to play this live’.
• Since COVID, they felt that they had worked a lot on other people’s stuff, they felt the ballance was off so they had to find a new way to start making their own songs in a very instinctive way.
• A lot of the lyrics just came to them. Both ‘All Systems Are Lying’ and the opening track ‘Pills And People Gone’ just have one sentence. It bothers them when artists use too many lyrics in a song, so they talked about keeping it simple. But they only managed to do this on these two songs.
  

• The song titles are a bit sloganesque but they like that, they become some sort of mantras.
• They never stop buying new synths, but when they start working on new ideas and it doesn’t work after half an hour – then it’s not worth pursuing.
• Dave and Steph do not have a vault with lost of unreleased music, simply because they throw away all the ideas or bits of music that don’t work.
• They have sent an email to Kevin Godley because they couldn’t figure out what kind of synth Godley And Creme used on a certain song to create a sound they liked. Turns out it was a prototype of some sort, but after more than five years Dave and Steph found one, bought it and after tinkering with it for ten minutes they found a sound they used.

There are plenty more topics they talk about, have a listen yourself. And a few nice anecdotes, including this one about Robbie Williams:

Listen to the full episode here: