Sunday 01/05/05 Soulwax @ Fleece and Firkin, Bristol

May 02, 2005 by Will Jenkins

Everyone who's ever looked at a keyboard and thought, "Hey, that would sound kind of cool in our band," has at some point sat in a semicircle at the foot of Soulwax and, in short, been taken to school. You want arena-spanning walls of noise? Forget your Korgs.You want block-rocking beats? It'll take more than an expensive drum kit to shake those expectant throngs. What it takes is five exuberant Belgians silhouetted against a pinstripe backdrop and the kind of soul-rendering talent that'd make Bach smash his piano in frustration. "Why won't it make those sounds?" he'd cry, bashing at the keys and weeping pitifully.

Electronica can be about ambience or just screwing with your brain, if you're a follower of Aphex Twin. Or it can be about sublime dancefloor grooves, as the talented Daft Punk showed with their first two albums. Or it can be about steamrolling the planet under a wall of rhythmic noise, overcoming all objection, all rational thought, all impulses except the urge to wave your arms and shake your ass because some punks are hammering their instruments like there is no tomorrow. A hurricane of noise, an earth shattering pulse, a vocal screaming across this pandemonium like a sonic boom, staggering amounts of energy strobing out of the amps, funnelling down the ears and directly into the gut.

Touring their second album, 'Any Minute Now' yet again, tonight confirms how much this sometime quintet have evolved since their first LP, ‘Much Against Everyone's Advice’. The Dewaele brothers remain the heart of the endeavour and the line-up change has done nothing to dilute their raw onstage energy, all five ragged heads bouncing in sync to their cataclysmic bawl, strutting birdlike against the monochrome stage dressing. And that says it all, really: the pinstripes, the black suits, the white lights. Surfing through seismic tracks such as the brilliant 'E Talking', this is music at a primordial level, stripped of pretence, utterly raw. It's right there in black and white.

For the record, this evening at Bristol's sweatiest venue, the Fleece and Firkin, has been the absolute highlight gig-going. We've all been to festivals, yeah, and to stadiums, and seen classic rockers strut their stuff to hordes of admiring fans, but never has a band shaken a room the way that Soulwax does this evening. You don't have to like rock, or like electronica, or like Soulwax, to appreciate Soulwax. If there is a pulse in your body, if there is a thought in your head, Soulwax can yank it out and stand it in front of the loudest amplifier in existence. Louder than anything you can imagine. It's right there in black and white: Soulwax own you.

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