Soulwax is back.

David and Stephen Dewaele aka Soulwax, aka their DJ alter ego 2manydjs, are already hyper GenZ relevant.  With remixes and edits of everyone from Fontaines DC to Tame Impala, the Dewaele brothers have been consistently peeking up above the event horizon of their synth lab. Now All Systems Are Lying marks their first studio album in five years, making this the first Soulwax record that GenZ will truly discover in real time.

For those of us who’ve been here since the mash-up years chasing their vinyl and mixtapes, this is a full-circle moment.

When As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2 landed in 2002, it cracked open club culture. There was a lot of chatter in the New York music scene about the way they DJ’d, which seemed uncouth and technically very difficult. Dolly Parton careening into a Belgian New Beat track was something most of us needed to see to believe. It wasn’t random or sloppy as you might imagine. They were precise even while mixing live with vinyl. It was an unlikely song combination after another, and each one worked.

Suddenly rock kids were dancing, and then Any Minute Now happened.  I still remember the first time I heard “E Talking” at the center of a beautifully alive and chaotic dance floor at Rory´s party “Trash” in London, where  indie rock kids got down to techno and dove headfirst into electro.  After that, it didn’t matter if DJs were masters of the mashup or simply cross fading because it all collided and emerged with a grin.

I was there for the crossover. Daft Punk was in fact playing at my house, and somehow I ended up with a 2manydjs wax pressing “borrowed” from a Tribeca Grand set. Still have it. Still perfect.

The Dewaele brothers are part of a broader European pop-electronic ecosystem that includes Daft Punk’s sleek futurism, Justice’s swagger, and the Kitsuné collective’s curated cosmopolitanism. (Kitsuné turned that scene into a lifestyle brand: half label, half fashion house.)  There’s the NYC connection with LCD Soundsystem who share Soulwax’s obsession with live energy and gear-driven precision. They both build dance music you can sweat to and still overthink later.

All Systems Are Lying feels like the culmination of all that lineage, and it´s just fun to listen to. It’s analog grit meeting modern clarity, still loud, still alive, still unapologetically Soulwax.

---

Tracks from All Systems Are Lying are already finding their way into our programs at Activaire. We built our platform, Curator, to make sure relevant music reaches every space it should. When music culture and brand stories move together, something phenomenal happens,  just like a Soulwax edit.
Curator makes this all possible. You can hear the difference.