Belgian brothers David and Stephen Daewaele are taking the electronic world by storm. Known as [Soulwax](https://www.instagram.com/deeeeweeee/) and 2ManyDjs, their newest creation, [_Foundations_](https://deewee.lnk.to/foundations), will be their 50th release from their label DEEWEE to date and is a compilation of tracks from the past and future. In 2013, the Grammy-nominated duo created a safe haven for artists around DEEWEE that serves as a label, production house, studio, and record collection.
_Foundations_ serves as DEEWEE’s debut compilation album and features “27 tracks born out of friendships, all produced and mixed by David and Stephen.” Collaborators on the project include Charlotte Adigéry, James Righton, Bolis Pupul and Asa Moto. From making music during COVID-19 lockdown to Zoom video calls, Soulwax has united a diverse group and formed an electronic family full of music lovers.
_Flaunt_ spoke with the brothers about their upcoming release, the compilation selection process and what they miss most about pre-pandemic life.
**_Foundations_ is your 50th release. Why did you want to make a label compilation?**
**Dave**: It just seemed like a good time to set a marker and say, this is where we are up until now, because it’s the 50th release. It’s been 5 years, and the label has grown in the last three years, and maybe a lot of people who maybe weren't following us recently didn't really catch up on the stuff that came before. And then there's another thing which is kind of silly but, in secondhand vinyl market, some of our releases are going for crazy money and people are asking us to repress so we thought it would be nicer to do a new compilation where they would have them on vinyl and we wouldn't have to repress the old ones which could maybe piss off the people who bought the first one.
**Do you have any favorite track or favorite song to perform? Or is that too hard to pick?**
**Stephen**: That's a hard one because it was really hard to make a compilation because we had to choose. I mean, because we like all of them. It was hard making the selection for the compilation. Like Dave said, there's reasons why you go back and go, ‘Oh this is what was out the last five years.’ But also, I guess we were really excited because we can put three new tracks on it, which made it for us—more fun, because we rarely look back on what we do. We’re kind of like—we did it, next. So the fact that we could put three new things in there, which kind of a little bit like sort of a window on what's coming up and what we're doing. I mean, that was exciting for us. The mere fact of doing a retrospective of what we've done the last five years seems a little bit indulging sometimes. I don't think it's in our nature to do it.
**How did you guys pick the songs?**
**Stephen**: We’ve had this question before and I don’t really remember. I don’t remember how we picked them. Like some tracks, people will like them so much that it was kind of obvious was to put those ones on there. But then there's always other things that we like ‘oh well you should check this out.’ It's kind of a balance of these things. But the selection, I think, is based on what Dave and me think is a broad representation of what we've been doing in this building.
**Dave**: We sequenced it so that it starts with the slowest bpm and it goes to the fastest. I guess we sort of built it up like a DJ set. It starts out calm and gets gradually more faster.
**Talking about Charlotte Adigery and Bolis Pupul, can you tell us anything that we might not know about her? about all these people and you know, how did you go about signing them to Deewee and all of that?**
**Stephen**: I don't think we ever signed anything. She’s someone who came into our life because we, Stephen and I, four or five years ago, we made the soundtrack to a film called _Belgica_ and we made about 20 fake bands for the film, where it was like it was us producing and writing it, but we had other people represent them in the film. And one of the selected, sort of the apotheosis song in the film was Charlotte. She was recommended to us by several people. And we just hit it off really quick. Soon after we started making stuff for Deewee, because she used to come here, she used to be really into whatever was happening on Deewee. Usually when people come to Deewee and record stuff, it’s a case where we have another place upstairs where Stephen and I, we go check in every couple hours or so, like checking what are you working on? How's it going? Maybe give them some tips. And on the day when Charlotte was supposed to come in, Stephen and I were in Japan, and so actually, Steph was like ‘it would be a really good idea to maybe set her up with bonus people who was another artist who we were already producing and releasing on the label. It's sort of like a match made in heaven, because right now they're super tight and best friends and great musical collaborators. And so it's kind of been a place, this building and label, a place where they can try out stuff and we’ve been pretty much involved. But, it's never been a business decision. It's always been because we were music lovers, and we all like to work together. But it's been amazing to see the reaction of people to her music. It’s really cool. It’s exciting for us as well.
**James Righton song release party….glam rock vibes. Can we expect a full length project from James at some point?**
**Dave**: We've already finished, he’s done. There's a Charlotte record coming out. There's a James Righton record coming out. There's a lot of new things coming out. I guess for us, it’s a little bit..I think for a lot of people ‘I don’t know what DeeWee is.’ But for us, it's kind of like our reality. A lot of stuff like James's... we made a lot of music during the lockdown, and finished a lot of music that we've been working on. So yeah, there's a lot of that stuff coming out. And James, his record, it’s pretty special.
**Can you explain a little bit about it or something?**
**Stephen**: He made a record, because I guess we found ourselves in March, we all have to go into lockdown. He was also in lockdown in London. And normally, people have to come to this building to work with us, because it all comes to the building. But he wasn’t allowed to come to Belgium, and he wasn’t allowed to come, and we weren’t allowed to go there. So we decided to do this thing where we would do it via Zoom. When we begin, it’s really intense back and forth, and what it was like for him to be in his basement, I think, making that record while he’s living his life within lockdown with the kids and his wife and everything. And so he becomes this persona when he goes into a studio. And I guess the whole record is a little bit about that. There's one really beautiful song on there which he writes about the passing of a friend of his...was in the first wave of COVID and he never got to say goodbye. He wrote a song about the specific event that the person went to and how the person got COVID. And so it's really, really beautiful. We’re really proud of it. But again, it's kind of surreal for me to talk about because they haven't heard it. We’ll have to do this again some other time.
**Did you have any favorite sessions from recording tracks on Foundations?**
**Dave**: That’s a good question. My brain doesn't work. Sworn Virgins maybe. They're definitely the easiest people we've worked with because they...let’s say they do certain substances. When they are in a particular mood, they take off. Then we kind of have to go into it and make it into a track, but you can feel the vibe they’re in, so we don't have to do a lot…
**So you've been recording a lot of music during the pandemic, but besides that, how have you spent your time? Has the pandemic changed anything really? has it affected your music?**
**Stephen**: I don't think it has particularly affected the type of music or the music that we make, it's just the amount has increased by a lot, because we used to be traveling every week and we will be in different parts of the world at any time. We were very used to that, because we sort of started doing that around 2000. So for like, maybe 20 years, we were constantly traveling. So to find ourselves in one place for such a long time... It's been a huge change in our lives. But at the same time, we've been productive. And yeah, I mean, it's been so many things for everyone. It has been at the same time terrifying and relaxing and intensive and productive. And it's been bad and good in many different ways like for everyone.
**What are you looking for the most when it ends? When everything opens up again**
**Stephen**: It's a hard one. I can’t talk for Dave but for me, something in me that doesn't want the world to also become the same as it was. Before we went into lockdown, there's a lot of things that were really bothering me that I felt like our society wasn't dealing with. And let's say, in the world that we operate in, which is music, and you go play live and stuff like that... I guess we already were looking for things that were less corporate maybe, and maybe had more of an emotional impact or spiritual impact of what they do—from an artist point of view and from an audience point of view. And I just fear that the pandemic has financially crippled a lot of people who had some really good ideas as well. So I'm looking forward to seeing people again, looking forward to playing again. But there's a simple realistic point in my brain that goes ‘yeah, but we're still not dealing with the real bigger issues.’ I'm a little bit hesitant. Maybe you'll see me at one of those bars...
**Dave**: So clearly, I wanted to spend time in the gym again. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. I want to travel. Like I really want to see parts of the world. I feel removed from the world right now.
**Do you guys have a favorite city to play in? Or a festival or something?**
**Stephen**: I guess one thing that the pandemic has shown, Dave and me, is that for 25 years, we have a social life via friends that are spread out in New York, in London, all over the world. We've been very lucky that twice or three times a year you would go to these places. We would do this. So you would kind of live in these places as well or have people. Especially with New York, Dave and me, it's been such an important place in our lives. So I guess there's not one favorite place but I guess the place we miss...like Dave says we miss our circle of people that we would see. Out of the category is always Japan for Dave and me because any excuse to go to Japan is great.
**Do you have a favorite story from show or performance?**
**Stephen**: Dave wasn't there. We once did an amazing show in Colombia. It was an electronic festival they were doing. It’s the first time they did it, and it was outside of Bogota, somewhere in the middle of nowhere. We were headlining. I think like 80% of the people were really going crazy and then everyone just looked really frightened at the stage. And we were like, did the sound cut out? what did we do? And then like, after two minutes, I look behind me and there's all these military people with machine guns shutting it down. And you could tell the audience was like, ‘get out, get out.’ I mean, I don't speak Spanish that much and I wasn't that good at it...The promoter who was promoting the festival, I see him run away into the crowd. I remember going like, ‘Oh no this is not good.’ And then we had to negotiate with the police, and then I got to get back to Bogota. And some guys randomly took us in a van. I remember we went to Peru the day afterwards, and threw an amazing party. But at Columbia, it was still a little wild.
**Dave**: Maybe the one thing that COVID has done or the pandemic has done is that my memory doesn’t work anymore. I mean, we've literally played like three, four times a week for the last 20 years. And I can't even remember one that we've done. It's a sign of getting older. I'm sure. When I think of New York, I think of the last time we were there playing was what we did this past year. We have a sound system with a friend of ours, James Murphy. And the last time we did it was in New York. And that's a really, really special, special special thing for us to be involved in and to be able to do. It's amazing and it's now, your question from before, it's one of the things I'm really looking forward to doing in the future. Doing Despacio.
**What's the longest set you've ever played as toomanydjs ?**
**Stephen**: 12 hours? No longer?
**Dave**: There wasn't 12? It was longer than 12?
**Stephen**: I think it was from six to six. No?
**Dave**: Yeah, we did a 12 hour set. We did a 12 hour set once in Rotterdam in Holland. It's really sweet because the promoter arranged for us to get a massage. But it's also weird, because I remember like they were putting on a record and then recording what happens. While you're on the thing, who do you think makes it to where you have to come back? It's fun to play. When we do this sound system, Despacio, the idea of it is that we will play from the first minute to the last. So we obviously like at least four or five or six, seven hours. Maybe three. So that's kind of cool. But it's a different way of playing because you kind of...It's a very different thing than coming in and doing a two hour set.
**Stephen**: We didn't prepare then and we don't prepare now.
**What's next for you too? What's coming up?**
**Stephen**: For us, going home and having food.
**Dave**: What's coming up? So many things. A lot of releases on Deewee. That's coming up. A couple of remixes. And then there's a lot of bookings coming in but, Belgium as a country, is still... we're not vaccinated yet. I think Europe is a little bit behind, but it's a slower tempo than, say America or the UK. It’ll be interesting to see when these worlds can come together again because it's been very weird to be segregated from each other.
Photo by Jorre Janssens
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