Soulwax – Perfect We Are Not
The backstory here is legitimately unusual. In February, Abbey Road Studios opened their doors to a public rave for the first time in the building’s history — 300 lucky winners of an online ballot, a five-hour 2manydjs set in Studio One using Soulwax’s DEEWEE Soundsystem. Two days before the event, David and Stephen Dewaele walked into Studio Two with their full live band — including three drummers — and wrote “Perfect We Are Not” from scratch. The song was conceived, recorded, mixed, mastered and cut directly to vinyl that same day, then debuted as the opening track of the rave that night. A documentary about the process, shot primarily on 16mm film over the course of three days, is available on YouTube.
“It’s hard to say whether we have a perverse or healthy attraction to crazy ideas”, the brothers said ahead of the event. “To be approached with a crazy idea by the most iconic recording studio in music history is even more attractive.” Part of the appeal, reportedly, was the gear available in Studio Two — including the piano used on “Lady Madonna.”
The song itself runs close to eight minutes. It opens with a beat that settles quickly into recognisable Soulwax territory: four drum hits establishing the pulse, Stephen Dewaele’s vocals alongside Laima Leyton’s in a kind of unhurried, almost hypnotic delivery. That structural calm doesn’t hold. About halfway through, the synths push hard, the drums accelerate, and the whole thing tips into the kind of organised chaos the band have been building toward since the early 2manydjs days. What’s impressive is that those four drum hits from the intro keep appearing in the wreckage — the architecture holds even as the surface dissolves.
What gets me about it is the sheer audacity of the premise paying off. Written in a day, in someone else’s studio, with gear you’ve never played before — and it sounds like a Soulwax track. That’s not nothing.
“Perfect We Are Not” arrives five months after All Systems Are Lying, the Dewaeles’ first Soulwax album in over seven years, released on their own DEEWEE label and described at the time as “a rock album made without any electric guitars.” This is something else: a dancefloor record with a production history that’s already become part of its mythology. I put it in the list this week because it rewards the full eight minutes, and because few bands could pull off the stunt without the song getting swallowed by the story.
Tour Dates Europe:
- June 12–14 — Glendalough Estate, Ireland — Beyond The Pale Festival
- August 8 — Castelbuono, Italy — Piazza Castello
- August 11 — Locorotondo, Italy — Masseria Ferragnano
