2manydjs

Forty-five clashes in a single hour

In 2002, a legalized, race-against-the-clock mix rewrote what a DJ set could be. As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2, by 2manydjs, chained 45 fragments—The Stooges with Salt-N-Pepa, Destiny's Child with 10cc, Dolly Parton with Röyksopp—in just over sixty minutes. The New York Times placed it among the best albums of the year and the CD sold around half a million copies. It wasn't a whimsical collage: they requested rights for 187 tracks, secured 114, and built the album with the 45 that fit into a continuous take on the turntables. The mashup ceased to be an internet bootleg and became a club artifact.

Hang the DJ and the Soulwax after-party

Before that record, they were already mixing at the after-parties for Soulwax, the electronic rock band they had formed in Ghent in the mid-nineties. First as The Fucking Dewaele Brothers and The Flying Dewaele Brothers; later, on the Belgian radio station Studio Brussel, with the show Hang the DJ. There, they clashed rockabilly, disco, hip hop, and new wave at a speed that broke the one-track-per-song format. In London, Erol Alkan and the Trash night recognized in that booth a rock attitude applied to the dancefloor. The remixes signed as Soulwax for Daft Punk, Gorillaz, LCD Soundsystem, Gossip, or Justice extended the same gesture: cutting genres and returning them harder.

Radio Soulwax, Despacio and the black building

In 2011 they launched Radio Soulwax: twenty-four visual hours of mixing, with animated covers and an app. The final installment, in 2014, was the video version of that 2002 record. With James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, they set up Despacio, a high-fidelity sound system designed for dancing slowly and at high volume, from London to New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Barcelona, and back to Ghent. In 2015 they opened the label and studio DEEWEE in a black granite building in the city center, from which they produce Charlotte Adigéry, Bolis Pupul, or Marie Davidson—whose remix of Work It earned them a Grammy nomination. The documentary Part of the Weekend Never Dies (2008) portrayed those years of touring between Soulwax Nite Versions and 2manydjs. In 2011 they won the DJ Award for best eclectic house DJ.

Reissue, film and open booth

In 2022 they reissued the foundational mix on PIAS, released it for the first time on digital platforms, and celebrated two decades with concerts, including a date at the Brixton Academy in London. They played at Coachella in 2023 and 2025. In 2025 they signed as 2manydjs the soundtrack for Banger, the Netflix film directed by So Me. They remain in the booth: Pacha in Ibiza, Sziget, Wilderness, Bugged Out at Drumsheds, Vicar Street in Dublin. The brand has not changed: treating the entire archive of popular music as a single genre, with the vinyl collection of their father, the broadcaster Jackie Dewaele, alias Zaki, as the origin myth and with Ghent as their headquarters.