Soulwax (La Riviera) Madrid 23/01/24

I´m gonna write my first gig chronicle in english for five key reasons:

1. 1.To merge Pitchfork and Muzikalia and join the best international music web in the world with the best spanish one. WIDE AWAKE IN AMERICA.
2. To prove that the music community in Spain understand English perfectly and that the language in which rock and roll was born is COMMON PEOPLE´s mother tongue.
3. To show it to my international music friends and tell them that if they wanna read more articles like this, they should learn spanish, the language of the future.
4. To pay a homage to the UK, the country I was raised musically in, and make them understand they´re europeans as fook.
5. To pay a homage to the USA, the country that gave birth to rock and roll and electronic music, Soulwax specialities.

And yes, to talk about my favourite music couple in the world, LOS HERMANOS DEWAELE, Stephen and David, BROTHERS IN ARMS.

I was the first person that brought SOULWAX to Spain back in the year 2.000, when Loreto Antón and me opened the PIAS SPAIN office in Madrid. It´s been ten years since I parted ways with  the Belgian company but i´ve kept in touch with LOS SOULWAXOS through all these years, as the BROS love Spain and Spain adores them.

Yesterday, at La Riviera, they came back after five years of not playing live in our country,  but it seemed like yesterday and I saw hundreds of recognizable faces i´ve met at festivals and clubs all across España.

And here i´m gonna prove Soulwax are more Spanish than they think.

They start the CEREMONY with two new songs, “Hot like Sahara” and “Idiots in love”, and they´re back in a new Spain, more plural and alive than the last time they were here. We have the best government in years and the economic situation in booming, like the 3 drum-kits that back up the sexy silhouettes of Stephen, David and the third brother, Stephan.

Stephen is the brain, David is the heart, and Stephan is the IA behind the Dewaeles. Nobody knew it but now you do. First point towards Pitchfork. I would like to be your new dealer of secrets in the music biz, amigos americanos.

After the new stuff, the first two anthems hit in: “Missing Wires” and “It is always binary”. Soulwax are the new Kraftwerk, but as all “all nu thangs”, they´re even better.

Cos MUSIC IS THE ANSWER, as Celeda and Danny Tenaglia said.

The three drums together sound like the “tamborada in Pamplona” so here comes the trip across Spain that the best band ever sprouted in Belgium is gonna bring you through.

The next song, “Polaris”, is new too. It´s more quiet and it sounds like the Monegros

desert, cradle of northern techno in Spain.  A place that will take our friends to Zaragoza, where the “jotas” are the popular and regional dance that sounds like the sampled castanets in “Do you want to take into trouble?”, the song that comes right after.

The band HIT THE NORTH of the set and the drums sound like the basque country “txalapartas”, popularized by The Crystal Fighters, another PIAS band I had the pleasure to work with back in my HALCYON DAYS.

The intensity of the sound makes me and my friend Vicky approach to the first row and I put my head inside the left monitor, watched by Stephan, that smiles at me while he plays bass like the bastard son of LEMMY and DEE DEE RAMONE.

MUSIC MAKES ME LOSE CONTROL and I am tempted to go up on stage and dance with my favourite band in the world as i´ve done zillions of times with the 2 MANY DJs.

But THE TIMES ARE A-CHANGING, I´ve grown up, and i´ve learned to be PUNK IN DRUBLIC, so I DANCE ALONE right beside Vicky, which smiles at me knowing i´m having THE TIME OF MY LIFE.

Another new song comes out as an unexpected Xmas present. It´s called “New earth time” and the sequence of chords resembles the local two-step song (IN SPAIN WE CALL IT PASODOBLE).

But the trip is FAR FROM OVER and Soulwax goes to THE BEAUTIFUL SOUTH to play a song called “Inward” that sounds like the Seville “pasos de Semana Santa” (Easter typical celebration in the city of river Guadalquivir).

The show is coming to the end, but the creators of “E-talking” and “NY Excuse” are going to Barcelona passing through Valencia, the land of acid-house. The three modulators on stage squeeze their frequencies bumping like a mixture of LFO and PATRICK COWLEY.

WHERE´S MY MIND?

I don´t know, as I only care about my HEART.

And it is between SOULWAX and 2 MANY DJ´S, LOS POLLOS HERMANOS.

Everybody leaves the stage but THE SHOW MUST GO ON and they do an encore with GOODBYE TRANSMISSON, a song that is like PAQUITO EL CHOCOLATERO but with a motorik beat. The public nod their heads like in the typical spanish pasodoble popular dance and Vicky smiles at me again.

The MAGIC is BACK.

This text is dedicated to the energy of LESTER BANGS, the BEST rock and roll writer ever in whom I was inspired to write it this way. God bless him wherever his ENERGY roams around.