Three Questions With Soulwax

Next up in the three questions series is the Belgian electronic band and DJ/production collective from Ghent, who formed in 1995, the legendary Soulwax! Brothers David and Stephen Dewaele answer three questions collectively below.

Soulwax's All Systems Are Lying is out now.

As part of Issue Five.

Photos by Nadine Fraczkowski and Younès Klouche.

Soulwax by Nadine Fraczkowski.

Synth History: How did you guys begin making music together?

Soulwax: We are five years apart so when I was 15 I had started a band with my two best friends that were my age and then one day Steph asked if he could join us to rehearse for his own band with his contemporaries that had never played a gig. I don’t think he ever went back to play with those guys, because we’re still making music together every day 30 years on.

Synth History: What was some of your early gear?

Soulwax: The first synths we bought were the Korg MS-20–that gigantic educational model that looks like a science fiction movie prop–and a Moog Source together on the same day for the amount of 400 euro. They were just sitting in a local music shop back in the early to mid-90s. We had no idea how to use it but, as we tend to do quite often, we purchased it based on how it looks and figured out the sound afterwards.

We used to scour the local wanted ads for synths, guitars, drums, recording gear etc so we’ve been fortunate to find a lot of crazy gear at an affordable price. The internet has totally changed that of course. In a way I guess it’s cool that we now own so much gear that is currently considered ‘desirable’, but it’s not like we are looking to sell it and it has totally sucked the fun out of searching for instruments. Also that hunt was partially motivated by the lack of then-new fun or inspiring gear we could buy, it was all boring digital workstations and modelling synths etc but nowadays there is so much new and fun gear, I doubt we’d do the same if we were 18 years old now. However much we are attracted by the classic machines, I’m not sure we’d save up to buy a museum relic the price of a car to be honest.

Synth History: What are some of your go-tos now?

Soulwax: The go-to guys for us tend to be the Synthi AKS, the 2600 and System 100 but we also just use whatever happens to be working and is lying around. We don’t tinker, and don’t like to lose a lot of time so we usually use them to execute an existing idea. Lately we’ve been using the Korg Trident and our Oberheim 8 Voice a lot but that’s probably because they happen to be reliable right now. It’s also kind of fun with the old machines that when one of them breaks down, by the time it comes back from repair–that’s a whole other conversation–it feels like a new toy again!

Synth History: You produce your own work, but also have a prolific career remixing. Do you approach these things differently, if so, how?

Soulwax: It’s basically all the same part of our brain, but quite a lot of our time is being spent producing or remixing other artists or making music for film, theatre, fashion etc so when it comes to creating our own music we like to not work to a brief and just see whatever comes out instinctively. So instead of solving a problem if you will, we like to create our own ones.

Synth History: Bonus question. Can you tell me about your relationship with the EMS Synthi 100? What drew you to that synth, and what is it like making music with it?

Soulwax: We’d heard for many years that there was one gathering dust at the Ghent University but it wasn’t till about ten years ago that we hooked up with them and sort of made a deal where we had it in our studio for about a year and we’d make an album using JUST that machine and have the Synthi 100 be the artist as opposed to Soulwax and we’d help them getting it repaired. It is definitely not an intuitive machine but since we’d had so many years using the AKS so intensively, it was amazing to make super complex self playing patches with it! We cleverly called the record DEEWEE Sessions Vol 1 so that hopefully one day it can come back to our studio for Vol 2.