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Packed like sardines, sweating profusely, pushed on to the wall by the throngs of people in a far, far too overfilled venue, Gigwise is hardly in the perfect mood to fully enjoy a mouth-watering Soulwax and 2 Many DJs double bill. Oh no, here comes a fat bird with rancid BO and jiggling bingo wings flabbing about in our face to further compound our misery. Oh woe. Christ, you’d need to neck a handful of pills just to forget about being inescapably wedged in - which the bloke next to us has wisely done. Thankfully though, the ever reliable Soulwax do enough to lift us out of the doldrums.
Playing material from their excellent ‘Nite Versions’ remix album, the band are clearly in their body bobbing element as they effortlessly fuse live instruments with plenty of knob twiddling. The interpretations are electronic-driven, raw and very clubby and cause the mass body of people crammed in to sway as one with the pounding beats. They can’t even resist foraying into the realm of 2 Many DJs - managing to cheekily work in a snippet of Roman Flugel’s ‘Gehts Noch’ into the set for good measure. Aside from the driving rendition of ‘Compute’ and a rousing, pulsing interpretation of ‘NY Lipps’, it’s the thumping, ubiquitous club anthem of ‘E Talking’ that really gets things going. Admittedly, not as impressive as a normal Soulwax set, the amiable Belgians still prove their remix album transgresses perfectly into the live arena.
Having somehow managed to escape to the sanctum of the bar for half an hour, we muster up our strength to return to the abyss for 2 Many DJs. Playful and exuberant as ever, the brothers Dewaele play an ass shaking mix of nose-bleed techno, housey numbers and unconventional gems. Technotronic’s ‘Pump Up The Jam’, Josh Wink’s ‘Higher State Of Consciousness’ (for the third time in the night), The Undertones’ ‘Teenage Kicks’ and the mighty Pendulum remix of The Prodigy’s ‘Voodoo People’ all get an airing in a suitably bouncey set. Quite why they had to play Benni Benassi’s abhorrent ‘Satisfaction’ we’ll never know – oh how it torments us so.
