Soulwax have announced details of their fifth annual Soulwaxmas.
This year’s event will take place on December 16th at the Brixton Academy from 9pm to 3am and tickets will cost £26.50, on sale from Friday 22nd July here.
In addition, their Radio Soulwax app has been a huge success, with over one million streams online. Forthcoming on the app are Hardcore or Die, This Is Belgium Part 2. and the brilliantly titled Axe Attack, where users have to try and guess the artist behind the riff before it’s revealed.
Soulwax are launching an online and app driven radio station on July 4th.
Radio Soulwax will provide 24 themed albums, each containing and hour long mix of exclusive audio and visual content, unveiled over 18 weeks. A one hour teaser is available to view here. All the visuals were created bespoke for each mix and feature imagery from the sleeve art that inspired each mix.
In addition to the live online feed – Radio Soulwax will be available to stream and download via a fully interactive iPhone/iPad/Android application. This can be downloaded from the Apple App and Google App stores from Monday.
First of all, and before you hear the inevitable comparisons from journalists that are somehow lazier than I am, Kids & Explosions does not sound like Girl Talk. The art of making music using the pastiche method of combining elements from existing pieces of music with other elements of existing pieces of music has become such common practice that people tend to confuse regular producers with mash-up artists, or worse, all of the above with Girl Talk. Rather than utilising nostalgic references and ADHD post-ironic pop culture twisters for the benefit of a party (like the Gregg Gillis’ frequently mentioned fraternity project, or 2manydjs), Josh Raskin has sat and watched that Four Loko-fuelled bandwagon roll away while piecing together ADD jams that favour melancholic glitches with expertly placed vocal samples that manage to evoke shoegaze textures and even post-rock build-ups every so often. The end result is a collection of songs that are at once listenable, memorable, bittersweet, quietly arousing and head-nodding.
Whether it’s when the layers of ‘Babies Of The Future‘ collide as RZA ‘brings the motherfucking…’ crescendo that refuses to conclude in a ruckus, or when ‘Swear Words‘ works as a comprehensive guide to exactly what the song title suggests over twee guitars we’re continuously presented with an oxymoron so obvious it would sound terrible if anyone else was making it. But it’s anything but terrible, and when album highlight ‘Use Your Words‘ builds from gentle piano and soft female vocal sampling to Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s ‘oh baby I like it raw’ line, recontextualised into one of the most beautiful, heart-wrenching things you could ever hear, you’ll be hitting the replay button more frequently than Josh has hit ctrl+v making the damn thing.
The album can be downloaded at whatever price you decree at Josh’s website. You can – and should – stream the album in its entirety there too, alongside suitably looped gifs.
Soulwax have announced details of their fifth annual Soulwaxmas.
First of all, and before you hear the inevitable comparisons from journalists that are somehow lazier than I am, 