Soulwax / Too Many DJs - Classic or Dud?

It's funny that while they are from Belgium, it seems easier to get the bootlegs in the USA. I haven't seen any of the compilations in a store over here (Belgium), let alone in a mainstream chain as Virgin.

There are a couple of places on the net that have tracklists of the cd's / mixes.

more on bootlegs / bastard pop / mixes / mash ups
http://www.culturedeluxe.com
http://www.base58.com/bsx
http://www.bastardpop.co.uk
http://gybo.proboards4.com/index.cgi
http://www.oorsmeer.tk

my, how upfront and cutting-edge of them... wankers (not 2ManyDJs, i like them).

i'd like to agree with frenchbloke's sentiment
that it wears thin quickly. *doesn't* it though ?
'hang the dj' was broadcast on radio 1, xmas day 2001
since then my feeling about it has gone
from 'hey isn't *this* great'
to 'christ isn't isn't this tedious'.

history has forgotten the avalanches too
which annoys me.

maybe the reason The Avalanches haven't done anymore killer DJ sets (or have they?) is cos the novelty wore off for them too?

It pretty much was... I watched the highlights all weekend without ever wanting to be there. Apart from the Moloko and Roots sets.

the 2ManyDJs things are really good to play at parties, which is definitely a compliment. And yeah you get sick of them after a while... but I get sick of pretty much everything after a while, lose the CD for six months then experience the joy of rediscovery.

However, the last 2 or 3 times I've seen them they've played the most cynical and lazy DJ sets I've ever seen.

also, there seems to be a new toomanydjs comp in HMV on import - part 11 or 12 or something. worth the cash? it's nearly 20 quid.

i'm just listening to the archived stream on radio1.co.uk tho

rocker
take me out
soulgrabber
la rock
da funk
9-5

EVERY SINGLE TIME. they're getting paid obscene amounts of money and their set barely changes, even in the space of a year. It's just been difficult to get excited by hearing those songs all together, anymore, I mean at first you could be like "wow da funk, nobody plays that anymore!".

Erol Alkan is everything they ever were times a thousand, and he changes his set from month to month.

Aren't a lot of these radio soulwax grey market CDs not even mixed by 2ManyDJs anyway? Not that this means they're necessarily any worse (or better).

Yes I am a snob about it, but ok imagine a pre-Christmas 2manydjs gig in Dublin, I just can't even envisage the amount of drunken tossers that'd be there. And then the over-praise from ignorami afterwards, you'd swear 2manydjs were the first people to ever play "Rocker", "La Rock", "Prototype" etc.

THE FIRST PEOPLE TO PLAY THOSE TUNES WERE YOU AND I GOD DAMN IT.

sorry ronan, i can't quite parse this. there's something wrong with people who don't know much about music going to see a dj set and coming away liking it? or are we saying 2manydjs don't belong to a certain privileged form of 'the dj set'?

And yes of course technical ability extends beyond mixing etc, perhaps this could be the grand discovery people might have following the global 2manydjs revelation but I won't be holding my breath.

it's not as though I'm an isolated cynic here, anyone I know who's seen them in the last year has said the set is exactly the same as the first time they saw them.

if the defence of them is "they are making lots of money" then fine, but I can't see any creative defence of them at this stage.

Is it really so unheard of for artists to stop touring something because it's getting flat or doing them damage, the longer 2manydjs tour this same set the more respect they will lose.

big deal to them I'm sure when the money's in the bank but why defend this!

The Beatles to thread!

Also, any band who drops their biggest hit from a live set for a few years, just to give it a breather - I think 2manydjs would benefit from this technique just as much as, say, Pulp or whoever. and surely they've got new mixing tricks up their sleeves by now?

I mean yeah, I agree with ropadop to a certain extent, I agree 2manydjs are stuck in a corner somewhat at the moment, but god given the money they've made by now they could take some more risks than they do, maybe it's just extremely difficult to stop doing something which so easily gets them such big gigs and makes so many people go crazy.

i would also say from personal experience that it is much, much, much harder to play a set of more interesting and new music when you are playing to a very large audience than when playing in an intimate nightclub. if i'm faced with an audience of several thousand, i am definitely aware that i play a lot safer and with a bit more of a rave mentality.

Twitch - were they playing relatively obscure stuff in this first, unpopular half of their set or just not the same hits as people were used to?

i know already: point is: this stuff is not new: gah

obscure as in new and not widely known, but not obscure as in weird and challenging for an audience to get into.

the whole dance crossover thing has become very weird in the last few years, it's like one act gets popular and then sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwlly gets popular for like 3 or 4 years among the general public.

Take the Mylo album for instance, I bet it'll be on ads in a year's time, and he'll get bigger and bigger for another 2 years, but so slowly.

It just doesn't happen with other genres, rock acts who get big like that have their haters even among just the general public, but with dance acts anyone in the general public who has heard of Mylo, you can guarantee it's cos they bought the record and like it.

there's this awful bland facelessness about MOR dance music that I sometimes think makes it worse than any other music out there, even though sonically I prefer something like Mylo to Coldplay or what have you a thousand times over.

it's like one act gets popular and then sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwlly gets popular for like 3 or 4 years among the general public.

just sounds like the path pretty much anything takes to popularity.

I mean, if you take Daft Punk as an act who have got well-known amongst the general public, surely there are lots of people who know who they are but don't like them?

but overall, yes, i agree.

and kind of related to this thread, my new years resolution was to dump nearly every record i played up until november 2004 from my record box. i wonder how long i'll stick with it?

ropadop I don't know you in real life do I?

I think Mylo is exploding a bit already (far and away our best seller in the shop this Christmas) but I still think it'll be a slow enough creep.

Royksopp's success was similar.

it seems that way. you're not interested in championing new acts as the big faces/artists and neither am i now. if no-one younger than you is looking for that either then that's a sea change in effect, back to basics etc.

http://www.residentadvisor.net/images/news/2007/soulwax-most-of-the-remixes.jpg

And tracklisting. Not terribly excited about this but the title/artwork is priceless.

a 2 many djs set is a great night out. they tend to play 4 to the floor stuff rather than the mashups nowadays.

Their mix of "Robot Rock" should be the real version.

I miss mashups. Why won't they release another 2 Many DJs mix? Those were great.

Riot in Liverpool:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgmVR0zW6eI

About This Video
Soulwax playing at nation in liverpool tried to...
Soulwax playing at nation in liverpool tried to help the crowd out and let them come closer to the stage only to be assulted and the drummer pushed into his drumkit 18 seconds into the video when the bouncers and security came onstage, completely uncalled for.
Added: November 03, 2007

Also, I kinda want the track list online so I can search for some of the artists new to me on it. Coming to this with a music knowledge only spanning the Indie cannon, these seems like a great way to immerse myself in lots of fun music that I wouldn't hear otherwise.

-- Jon Williams (ex machina), Wednesday, July 23, 2003 7:32 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Link

As my (scouse) mother would say 'Just what Liverpool needs'.

Anybody watched/downloaded Introversy yet?

Guardian article on the project

this is extremely cool

Introversy's good but IntroInspection was better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5xAugLdNuo

This sounds awesome! I just dug up "Nite Versions" like 3 days ago and have listened to it probably a dozen times since.

Anybody watched/downloaded Introversy yet?

I downloaded the radio version two years ago. not as much of a "song" as Intro-Inspection, but a delightful trivia challenge!

I want to see the one with the people re-enacting the covers.

yeah, i'm watching the parade of song intros/album covers, and it's cool enough, but i want to see/hear the other 23 mixes

^ has just introduced me to jona lewis' "you'll always find me in the kitchen at parties", worth it for that, at the very least

Holy shit, guys, has anyone else snagged this Radio Soulwax app or seen the website? 24 hour-long mixes with accompanying visuals, etc. So stellar.

just discovering 'introversy'.

just really fantastic work. whenever they bring in something obscure they really justify it with the sonic connection, but it's seamless in a way that goes well beyond the level of trivia. although I have to admit, the video for this is gratifying to precisely the archelogist in me: when you see the album covers, you really learn what all these samples that you're already intimately familiar with

really need to find an mp3 of this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgdMminpJ98

If you have an iPhone (don't know about other smartphone apps) you can download the Radio Soulwax app for free and stream or even download the mixes (Introversy is among them).

Milton, try the free YouTube Downloader (converts vids to mp3s) from cnet.com. Just watch out for the toolbar it wants to install (not required). Or the Switch Sound Coverter (also free, also from cnet) might do it.

Converter, not coverter (Freudian slip)

^or do that. the app with the animated covers is essential for the archeologist in you though ;-)

will definitely be getting the app. hoping to score a less lossy mp3 of just the audio as well, one I can port to other machines that aren't an iphone or an ipad

I'm actually impressed enough that content like this can appear in the app store! But since it's a stream it falls under the auspices of being 'radio' and not original content that violates other copyrights. Which is good, because it gets distributed. But is also silly, because anyone with half a mind will see this and realize that it damn well is original content.

Which is why I want that mp3.

Milton, I'm on this for you, making a good rip of that youtube film and creating an mp3. But it's going slower than I had hoped, so I won't be able to put it up tonight, it will be tomorrow. Just so you know :)

Here's my rip: download

Thank you sir!

Welcome! Is it an ok-ish quality?

What are your favorite mixes so far? IMO Under the Covers blows everything else out of the water, an I think Mehari's got the best visuals

where do you see all these different long mixes?

http://2manydjs.com/?page=radiosoulwax or the app

Mehari 2 is so, so killer
Celestial Voyage 2 sounds sorta Avalanches-y to me.

any way you can watch the visuals / hear the mixes without itunes?

What the hell happened to the rest of the mixes? Nothing's been updated in almost two months.

They are on tour right now, they were here a couple nights ago.

2 many Soulwax threads to choose from; I'll go with this one:

SOULWAX ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM

ALL SYSTEMS ARE LYING DUE OCTOBER 17TH VIA DEEWEE / BECAUSE MUSIC

DOUBLE A-SIDE SINGLE “ALL SYSTEMS ARE LYING / RUN FREE” OUT NOW

ghod I hope they tour the US this time, the filmed sets of the 2018 three-drummer lineup were incredible

https://www.2manybootlegs.com/

All of their mixes are available here through Mixcloud links. God, they were so unbelievably good.