Soulwax

SOULWAX - ALL SYSTEMS ARE LYING

2025 and what's an album to do?

Stephen and David Dewaele, being the brothers from Belgium who are the permanent, fixed members of the group Soulwax, and both of them being in the room for the making of this press release about their new album All Systems Are Lying. This is, after all, how they made the record, the pair of them together in their DEEWEE studio in Gent... a supergroup of two.

Then, of course, as has been widely experienced around the world, there is Soulwax live, the full band of Stefaan Van Leuven, Laima Leyton, and the three (yes, three) drummers: Iggor Cavalera, Blake Davies and Aurora Bennett. And when theatres, festivals and whole audiences are reverberating to the rhythm, Soulwax is truly a supergroup of you.

Stephen: "Supergroup of you is great."

David: "Yeah. One thing I think we're fortunate to have, when fans come up and speak to us, they say, that to them, whatever journey we're on, they're on as well."

Stephen: "But isn't the purpose of this interview to say something to people who don't even know we exist, or who have no idea what we did the last 20 years. Just to... fuck with them a little bit?"

Indeed, because perhaps we do know that they have made five previous Soulwax albums, enjoyed Grammy nominations for the world famous remixes of everyone from The Rolling Stones to Wet Leg, co-created the Despacio Sound System with James Murphy, produced and mixed every release on their own DEEWEE label... that we should be concentrating on All Systems Are Lying, and the question of what does it mean?

Stephen: "The recurring theme is: Is it real? Is it not real? All Systems Are Lying is a phrase we were using while making the record. Whenever the computer crashed, whenever there was fake news, this was our phrase. Eventually, we were like, okay, this is the record."

David: "It felt like the studio was an antenna."

Stephen: "Is it real what I see? Is it true what they say on the news?

David: Is this really real money? Do I have a tangible thing?"

The conversation replays like lyrics from a lost Laurie Anderson record and you you get some idea of what All Systems Are Lying feels like. It feels, and sounds, like the time we are in right now, as experienced by two people who have made records before and know that now is not then. So it is knowing, yes. But also knowing when to let go and let the music make the moment.

Stephen: "It wasn't like we set out to be like, okay, let's make an album about how the world feels right now. It's kind of the reverse, at the end of the process, we were like..."

David: "...oh, all this stuff… all the stuff that was around us… reached the surface."

How do they think the record will be received?

David: "It's making it and achieving it that is the thing for us. Anything else, once it goes out into the world, we have no… it's like winning the lottery, like, great if you do, but you have no control over it. The only thing that we can control is making something that we get goosebumps off."

There are highly dynamic goosebump songs on the record. Run Free, Gimme A Reason, Idiots In Love stand out as genre-defying electronic rock songs - the new ERS acronym has been chosen carefully as, when asked what is different about this album from any previous Soulwax record, the short answer was...

Stephen: "It's made without any electric guitars."

The songs are already live crowd favourites.

Stephen: "Gimme A Reason. Yeah, that's a big one. Gimme A Reason just kills."

David: "And also, even on the record, we don't… It's really hard to capture the feeling of three drummers going for it at the end part."

Stephen: "But when we do it live, it just totally makes sense."

David: "It's like ABBA."

Yes, it is true that if you love Soulwax, you'll love this record. And not because it sounds like Soulwax, but because sometimes it doesn't. And the best thing about following the Dewaeles, whether through Soulwax or their world class remixes, or via 2manydjs, Despacio or their DEEWEE studio and label, is knowing not what to expect. They do things differently - different to everybody but themselves that is.

So when you are banging your head to the very rock-guitar-sounding synths on Idiots In Love, and forgetting for a few minutes how crazy the world has got, remember that only one thing is known to be true: All Systems Are Lying.

And if you have never bought a Soulwax record before this moment in 2025,
be safe in the knowledge that you have picked one hell of a time to start.