How Soulwax remixed Tame Impala, Peggy Gou, Daft Punk, Justice and moreEarlier this year, MusicTech published How we remixed The Cure. The feature included insight from five artists who contributed to Mixes Of A Lost World, a remix compilation from the legendary rock band’s newest album, Songs Of A Lost World.
Well, had things played out a bit differently, only one artist would have contributed to Mixes Of A Lost World: Soulwax.

READ MORE: How we remixed The Cure: Tips from Orbital, Trentemøller and more

“Robert [Smith] sent us a really nice note saying he wanted us to do the whole record. And the truth was that we could only make it worse,” says David Dewaele, who comprises half of Soulwax alongside his brother, Stephen.
Over the last 20 years, Soulwax remixes have become heralded as the pinnacle, with the Dewaeles putting their spin on everyone from Tame Impala to Daft Punk to The Rolling Stones. But their most common response to remix requests is the same as they gave The Cure:
“We turn most of them down. If we don’t have a good idea, we’re not going to do it for the sake of it,” Dewaele continues. This meticulous approach allows them to enjoy the process when they do have a good idea. “Because we spend so little time on remixing, it’s what keeps it fresh. It’s one of the things we’re so well known for, but it’s not what we think of when we wake up in the morning. It has a parallel life.”
Recently, the Dewaeles have been spending time on their new album, All Systems Are Lying, due out October 17, but here, David took a break to speak about eight essential Soulwax remixes and how they made them.

Tame Impala – Let it Happen (Soulwax Remix)
Key gear: System 100, Wilson bass guitar
The remix of Let It Happen sounds like a live version of the original. How do you approach a remix when your intention is to keep it sounding like the first version?
The original song was so amazing, but it’s in 6/4. That is not ideal for a DJ to play out, so the first thing we did was reconstruct the song to 4/4. We kept [Kevin Parker’s] vocal as a full song, as opposed to on other remixes, where we cut up the vocal to make something radically different from the original.
Weirdly enough, because you said it sounds like it could have been just a live version, other than the rhythm guitar and his vocal, everything else has been replayed. It’s new drums, bass, percussion, synths, everything. It was both a challenge and an opportunity to do something that would musically stray from the original, but keep the song intact.

Justice – Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Remix)
Key gear: MAPLIN 5600S
Justice’s sound design is so iconic. What was it like for you to put your spin on such a well-known sound?
When we did that remix, it wasn’t a well-known sound. They had a hit with their remix of We Are Your Friends by Simian while they were working on the album. That was the thing that they were known for. So, it wasn’t iconic yet.
We’d been friends for a year when they played us the album. Phantom Part 2 had this perfect blend of the aggressiveness we liked in rock music. But had that interesting melody that we could extend and make something that would work dramatically on the dance floor.
The original was quite static for us energy-wise. We mainly kept their synths but heightened the energy by what we do percussion-wise, and then we added a bunch of synths to make it smaller and bigger.

Chemical Brothers – Hey Boy Hey Girl (Soulwax Remix)
Key gear: EMS SYNTHI AKS, Roland TB-303 Devilfish Mod
The main thing you added to this one is a breakdown and build-up. How do you choose which element to be the driving force behind one of those breakdowns?
Unfortunately, that’s an answer I can’t give you, because I don’t know where that comes from. It’s staring us in the face when it happens, but I don’t know why it’s that thing. That whole process is not cerebral. I wouldn’t be able to explain it. I could make something up, but it would be fake.
The intention comes back to us as DJs. We want to avoid things ever becoming boring. So every 10 seconds, something needs to happen, and sometimes these long or extensive breakdowns are ideal because adding a hi-hat can feel so euphoric if you come from a minimal setup.

The Rolling Stones – You can’t Always Get What You Want (Soulwax Remix)
Key gear: ARP 2600
How did it feel to make this beat that Mick Jagger himself would never sing over?
Well, he loves it, by the way. This one was different in that it wasn’t made for the dance floor. It was made for a movie. They gave us a few options, and that one fit the song, our ethos, and the film.
The strange part was the rights. The rights for most of the Stones’ back catalogue are owned by this company called APCO, which is Alan Klein, who also managed The Beatles for a while; he owns that era of music. They sent the person in charge of the rights for those songs to Ghent to make sure we wouldn’t run off with the original parts.
We had this lovely woman from APCO sitting in our studio, basically saying, “How long do you think this is gonna take?” It ended up being a week, and she just sat on the couch, which is not the most inspiring situation. But in the end, we managed to do it.
We didn’t want to cut up a vocal and just make an Aphex Twin-type thing. We went through all the parts and found the bits that we thought we could keep, and walked that fine line between making something new without it being blasphemous; without it just being a house beat with the original song underneath.
We’ve had so many people come up to us and say that initially they thought it would be blasphemous for us to remix it, but they still love it. So, that’s a big compliment. Both from the Stones camp and from Stones fans.

Daft Punk – Robot Rock (Soulwax Remix)
Key gear: Korg MS-20
On this one, you guys reworked the descending synth line into numerous different sounds. What was it about that specific element that inspired you so much?
Daft Punk made this by sampling a Breakwater song. They’d cut it up and added the “Robot Rock” vocoder vocal. So all they gave us was two stereo tracks: The sample and the vocoder. Maybe their synths as well, but not a lot to work with.
By no means am I dissing that part, because I hugely respect it. How ballsy is that? To be like, “That’s it. We don’t need to add anything. This is good enough.”
For us, Daft Punk is hugely influential, and they were like, “Hey, we’re coming out with a new album. Here is the very first song, and we want you guys to remix it.” So the only thing that we felt some kind of freedom with was that synth line. We used a million synths, but it was mainly the MS-20. The work we did was more structural, adding those elements. But I kind of wish that we had more to work with.

Felix Da Housecat – Rocket Ride (Soulwax Rock It Right Remix)
Key piece of gear: EDP GNAT
Felix Da Housecat has been playing dancefloors for decades. What was it like to convert a song of his that was more befitting of different environments to a club version?
We’d become really good friends, and there was a period where we would be DJing on the same bill every two months or so. So at that point, you know what each other’s sensibilities are musically. We knew what he wanted, and he was quite eager to work with us.
Whenever he would come to our studio, he was always blown away by how the ARP 2600 sounds. Also, in previous remixes or productions, he was always asking, “How did you make this?” It was always with ARP2600. So we knew that for “Rocket Ride,” we were gonna have to do something with that.

Peggy Gou – I Go (Soulwax Remix)
Key gear: Ursa Major on ARP 2600, Roland Cloud Pro Mars plug-in
You spoke about ideally having more to work with on the Daft Punk remix. This song has lush melodies, which I imagine gave you tons to work with. With that in mind, what was it like producing this remix?
At first, we did a more heightened version of the original, and she came back to us and—we really respect this—she said, “Guys, this is great, but I don’t think you understand. I need something that can have a dramatic build, and then come in and be the big song of my DJ sets.”
We played with all the elements that we thought she was going towards with her DJ sets, which is more like 90s breaks. There were a lot of samples. There’s a sample that 808 State used on one of their big songs, but it’s actually in the E-mu emulator sample library. So we felt like we were just referencing a lot of early to mid-90s house and breaks. We wanted it to be different from stuff we’ve done before, but have the same energy levels.

Gossip – Standing In The Way of Control (Soulwax Nite Version)
Key gear: EMS-SYNTHI AKS
Gossip’s original song has a lot of sounds that are similar to Soulwax. How did you approach remixing a song that had such a sonic overlap?
Back then, we were playing the original in our DJ sets, but in comparison to all the other stuff, it wasn’t hitting as hard. It wasn’t coming in as energetically as we wanted it to. So, we just rang them up and said, “Hey, can you send us the multitrack for this?” Their response initially was, “We would have never dared to ask you to remix, but go ahead.”
[Our remix] is basically a selfish version for ourselves to have something for us and our friends, like Erol (Alkan) and Tiga, and James. Something to play out. This was at a time when a couple of bands were doing rock music for the dance floor; The Rapture, Gossip, Glass Candy. We felt like we could add something.
We took a while to reprogram all their drums to sound like they were cut up, replay the bass, and then add a bunch of synths. So it’s ideal, because we were able to be very faithful to the original. We just extended parts that we thought could work on a dance floor. This is the ideal mix, where we were able to keep the original song, augment it, and make this version that has become more well-known than the original. All the elements were there.
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