Soulwax performed tracks from their new album at the Waterfront on Tuesday 11 October in the setting they were made for. Nite Versions is a re-working of their Any Minute Now album which came out last year. The Belgian band were inspired by the 12-inch remixes of hits which '80s bands like Duran Duran used to release to play in clubs. The Radio Soulwax tour was launched in September at top London club Fabric which featured brothers Stephen and David Dewaele spinning dance discs under their moniker of 2 Many DJs as well as striking the chords on their synthesisers as part of the Soulwax line-up. In Norwich, Ukrainian DJ Vitalic also took over the decks and there was a set from Headman/Manhead too. Stephen took a break from record shopping to chat to Zoe Applegate before the Norwich gig, about why the tour will appeal to both live music fans and clubbers, how growing up in Belgium broadened his ear for sounds and why he is a musical magpie. Where are you at the moment? I'm standing on Oxford Street, right across from HMV. Are you going to buy some new records? Yes, actually I want to buy a record by somebody, so when I'm done I'll be jumping in there and supporting the record industry. Who's the record by? It's a record by a band called Arcade Fire. They're a Canadian band, and they're really, really good. You're bringing out a new LP called Nite Versions which is a re-working of Any Minute Now. Why did you choose to do it? When we did our Any Minute Now record we always thought it would have been a great idea to remix the record and release it together with Any Minute Now. So you would have had the normal record and the remixed version together and it would have been like a day and night version, but for some reason we never had the time to do it so it took us a year and now it's out. I don't know if we had a specific reason why we wanted to do it but it just seemed like fun to go in and re-work your own stuff and strip yourself from all ego and come up with something new. It's pulling on your DJ background as well with the Nite Versions. I think we went into the studio with the idea of, 'Look, we're going to make dance versions of this, but it should be something that 2 Many DJs can play'. Why did you choose to cover Daft Punk's Teachers? They've been a really big influence on us and we thought it would be funny because in Teachers, the Daft Punk version, they make a list of DJs who have been really important to them and who were influential on them as a band. We thought it would be great to re-do this whole track but then use real instruments and make a list of rock bands or people who have influenced us as a rock band. The Nite Versions idea was... if we're going to do this album and it's going to be dance remixes then we would like it to be played at night in clubs because that's the environment where it should be. So that's the idea we had and then Duran Duran used to call a lot of their remixes Nite Versions so it was a blink of an eye to them, so that was good. Listening to Nite Versions it's one continuous mix so when you come to Norwich will you be playing without any breaks? Yeah, yeah. When we do the Nite Version tour - the idea is to have the band: the drummer, the bass player, me and my brother on synths and that's it, there are no electric guitars - the idea is to start, and before us there will be some friends of ours DJing, there will probably be Vitalic... playing, so the idea is to make a whole event. When DJing you can chop and change your tracks to suit the crowd's mood, but will you be doing that with your live show? It's kinda hard because when you do it live there's a structure which you have to respect. But there is this new software called Ableton Live... the idea is you can drop in samples and you can start DJing with it. We've been working with that and on the tour we will probably use that live also. We'll be playing live and I will probably drop in samples and other things in there so it will make it interesting every night. What exactly can people expect from your live shows? The real star of the show is our drummer because he has to go on for 50 minutes. There are very, very few breaks in it so he has to keep the beat going which is cool. It's a fun thing to do and hopefully people will like it. With bands like Franz Ferdinand and Babyshambles playing at places like Manumission in Ibiza, how do you think the boundaries between dance and rock music are becoming blurred? I think they've always been blurred. I think they've become even more separate in the last couple of years. I think people would only listen to deep house and house and stuff like that and now it seems that people are a little bit more open to dancing to rock music. Some of my favourite bands have always done that - bands like The Clash have been doing that amazingly. People would dance to Magnificent Seven and Rock The Casbah - well, they were rock songs but people dance to it. I think it's an exciting time. For me the dance scene is not really interesting and the rock scene isn't interesting. It becomes interesting when - and most of my favourite artists do that - people pick their favourite parts out of something and make it into their own thing. Is it any more daunting having to play a live gig rather than a DJ set? You know DJing is easy, I have to say. You take a box of records, then you play somebody else's music. There is a style to the way you do it but it's an easier job. Playing live you're subject to a lot of things which can go wrong, and you're on the stage - it's just a different thing. But then doing both of them is kinda cool though. I like doing both of them but I'll be tired though. The good thing is - because we got so many offers - we could say we'll do it but only if we can do it with friends and we can do it in a way where we can have fun. You're based in Belgium but you spend most of your time playing in other countries, so what is it like being away from home so much? I'm used to it after all of these years. It's not that hard any more - it's what it is. It's what I choose to do and I'm really fortunate and happy. I'm able to travel a lot and the UK is like my second home. Have you got a house here? No, but we come over so much. It's like every week or two weeks. It's good for my air miles. As 2 Many DJs you're used to working with your brother, so how does that dynamic change when you're in a band where you're also working closely with other people? I think Soulwax has always been our bass player, my brother and me - that's always been the core of the band and then there was Steve, our drummer. Working with my brother - I don't know why we started working and how it works - because I always have to explain in interviews but it's hard. For some reason we have this thing where we don't have to say that much to each other. Also, I think, the other people in the band have seen what our quality is and we all - after all this time - know how it works. I think that's why we're still doing this. Who are the live bands which you go to see? I don't get to see that many bands. Most of the time you're in a festival and you're somewhere else and you're always excited about seeing a band but you're on at the same time or you never get there because you have to do press but I would have loved to have seen Arcade Fire... There are so many good bands. Friends of ours, LCD Sound System, are one of the most amazing live bands. There is so much good stuff out there. Earlier you made reference to Duran Duran, so who were the bands you grew up listening to? At the beginning I was a huge metal fan. I was into AC/DC, Van Halen and Motorhead and stuff like that. Then I got into all this obscure stuff and Human League and stuff. I think I was pretty diverse and already really obsessed with it from an early age. Is it fair to say that growing up in Belgium you didn't have access to the music industry like youngsters in Britain do. How hard was it to establish yourselves? Not at all because I think where I'm from, Ghent, is a place where a lot of dance music was around. There was a label in the '80s and '90s called RNS which also put out the first Aphex Twin records and it was a label from my home town. So my home town was one of the very first towns to appreciate new electronic music, so in that case it wasn't hard at all. Also, people forget that Belgium is such a small country and it's like a sponge and we soak up all the information we get from England and France and Holland and Germany so it's kinda cool. There is a lot of access to a lot of things. I've read that you have some decks in your dressing room - will you be bringing those to Norwich? It's mostly for if we're in a town and we get to a record store and you want to listen to the records you've bought. There is a lot of time that you have to kill so it keeps you busy. | 
