Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Nite Versions, the fourth and probably most influential album by Soulwax.
A year before, the band released their long-anticipated third album, Any Minute Now. Although that album had popular tracks like “E Talking” and “NY Excuse,” it received mixed reviews when it was launched.
In their own words:
David: “The original plan was to release it at the same time as ‘Any Minute Now’, and most of the recordings of ‘Nite Versions’ were done during the recording of that album with Flood. Because we made so many different versions of these songs, there were always a couple of ideas that we thought would work as a dance track.”.
Stephen: “’Any Minute Now’ was a really tough process. But ‘Nite Versions’ was the complete opposite. It only took a couple of weeks, spontaneous and that’s it. That was probably one of the coolest things we ever did. It was so easy for Dave and me. It was fun.”
The opening track ‘Teachers’ is a Daft Punk cover.
Stephen: “In the Daft Punk version, they name all the DJs that have been important to them: Jeff Mills, Louie Vega, Green Velvet,… But we used bass, drums and guitars when we played it live with Nite versions, so it made more sense to name the bands that inspired Soulwax: from T-Rex to Barkmarket.. and local bands from Ghent like The Mudgang and 80s heavy metal band Ostrogoth! (laughs).”.
They even do another mashup: NY Lipps is the combination of their own song NY Excuse on top of ‘Funkytown’, theworld famous song from Lipps Inc.
Stefaan: “That was the bomb! It got so much airplay. A bit frustrating though, everybody danced to the groove from Funkytown and not Soulwax.”
Stephen: “’Any Minute Now’ is our best bestselling Soulwax album to date, but ‘Nite Versions’ had a much bigger impact.”.
They decided to tour with the new album, not as “Soulwax”, but as the electro band “Soulwax Nite Versions”.
Kenny Gates (PIAS): “This is the third brand already. You had Soulwax, 2 Many DJ’s and now there was Nite Versions. It should be a study case for a marketing doctorate, a really difficult story to tell.”
The Soulwax live set was ever evolving: in the beginning of the ‘Any Minute Now’ tour, Soulwax would still play a couple of tunes from ‘Much Against Everyone’s Advice’ before they start to bring in some tunes from ‘Nite Versions’.
Eventually the new ‘Nite Versions’ set, where the band swap their black stage clothes to white ones and the black and white stripes backdrop to a pink one, resembling the artwork of Nite Versions. Dave swaps his guitar for an MS-20.
The venues also change from traditional (rock) music stages to dance clubs. One of the first shows is at Sonar in Barcelona and in the dance hall of Pukkelpop.
David: “I’ll never forget our first ‘Nite Versions’ show. It was at Fabric in London and our mom was there too. It was the first time an audience reacted in the same ecstatic way to our live set like they did on our dj-sets. People were going mental, and I see our mother dancing like crazy. With a beer in one hand, and a cigarette in the other. And she doesn’t smoke!”
Stephen: “It was hilarious to come to clubs like Fabric with ‘Nite Versions’, they had never had a live band before.”.
David: “From then on we thought, this is crazy. We were being so difficult all these years, but it was easy actually.”
Steve: “’Nite Versions’ was like a formula or machine, it just worked. If you can blow people away each day, that’s a great feeling.”
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