Primed to set the summer festival season ablaze with their world famous mashups and a brand new tech-savvy live show to boot, 2manyDJs’ return to Australia couldn’t have come a better time for punter keen to have some life-affirming moments over New Years. But for the bootleg heroes themselves, Stephen and David Dewaele there have been a couple of things standing in their way, namely broken bones and nasty squash-induced injuries.

ITM’s Dave Ruby Howe recently caught up with one half of the Dewaele brothers, Stephen to discuss the duo’s new live show, Ableton, and the possible end of their DJing career.

Hey Stephen, this is Dave from inthemix, how are you?

Hello, yes, I’m doing okay.

Glad to hear it, what are you up to tonight, are you and David DJing?

No, not tonight, actually I’ve had to take some time off because I recently broke my foot and then sprained my shoulder.

What? Woah, that is terrible news, sorry to hear it. How did you manage to do both of those?

It’s not to bad, I’m okay. The shoulder came first actually, because I was playing racquet ball with our friend Igor Cavalera, who does the Mixhell productions. It was really a stupid idea for me to do, because he’s this huge guy, you know, he used to be the drummer for Sepultura, so somehow I thought I could be a real man and keep up with him on the court. I’m not sure how it happened, but after the game I was in a lot of pain and found out I had sprained my shoulder!

That sounds pretty horrific! How have you managed the recovery process?

It’s been alright, I’ve just been doing the things a normal person would do, watching a lot of TV you know. I had to miss a gig though, so David was doing it alone, I felt really bad about that.

Well, we hope you’re well rested and ready to hit the Australian festival circuit over New Years.

Don’t worry, I’ll be ready by then!

Speaking of which, can you tell us a little bit about the 2manydjs ‘live show’ that we’ll be seeing over New Years down here? How will it be different to just a regular DJ set, though I hate to call it that!

Well, we wanted to make it more than just a DJ set that you might see us do in a club, and because they’re really big shows we couldn’t do something small. So we tried to do something different but at the same time keep the strong visual side to things, you know? So onstage we are manipulating the sleeve art of the records we’re playing at that moment, and making something that we think is interesting and fun.

I saw some footage on YouTube of a festival show in Europe where you were playing the Armand Van Helden remix of Bonkers by Dizzee Rascal, and I was pretty blown away by the animation that was going on with that sleeve. Is that sort of the level that Australian fans can expect?

That’s exactly what we are doing. With the Dizzee Rascal cover, which is already a great piece of art, we animate it and bring Dizzee to life almost! Not all of our records are as easy to do as that Dizzee sleeve, but even if it’s a sleeve that’s quite plain, we still try and do something interesting with it, to make it exciting for the people.”

The whole concept sounds pretty cool, has it been well received in your shows up to now?

We have had some very good responses to the shows here in Europe already, so we’re pleased. One thing that I think people love about the show is that because the record cover is up there on the screen when we play nobody will be left asking what song we’re playing! We’re always getting asked ‘what was that song in there’ and it’s pretty hard to remember them all, so we think this is an easy way to let people know what songs we’re playing.

How is the show set up technically, are you guys running a big Ableton rig?

I really like Ableton, but we just don’t know how to use it properly! So we’ve just built up our own way of doing things over the years, finding out how we can make everything happen with our hands. People don’t believe us but at these live shows we’re doing everything up there on stage; we’re mixing the records, but also triggering and programming the animations as we go. That’s why there’s some mistakes in there!

I managed to secure an interview with Alex of Boys Noize recently, and I’m not sure if it was because it was like 1AM for him, but he sounded pretty down on himself, and he talked quite a bit about seeing the end of his DJing career coming up in the future. Do you and David ever think about that sort of thing, you know, giving up the DJ lifestyle and perhaps focusing on other parts of the Soulwax/2manydjs universe?

Wow, poor Alex! Well, yes that idea of not wanting to be a really old DJ is something I think about and definitely we’ve been getting into a lot more production work recently. We’ve been doing a lot of things in our studio this year, we finished producing the Das Pop album not so long ago, which we loved doing.

Last question, I promise! Is there anything specifically that you’re looking forward to on your Australian trip over New Years?

Well I know it will be summer over there so that will be nice, but mainly I think we’re just excited to come back and show you guys the new show we’ve been working so hard on. And playing a lot of big festivals with some good friends of course.

2manyDJs tour dates:

Thursday December 31st – Killer, Melbourne
Friday January 1st – Field Day, Sydney
Friday January 1st – Summadayze, Melbourne
Sunday January 3rd – Summadayze, Perth
Saturday January 9th – Summafieldayze, Gold Coast
Sunday January 10th – Midsummer Circus, Adelaide