Chet Faker (Nick Murphy) with Soulwax

Nick Murphy is best known for his downtempo electronic project Chet Faker, which is confusing because it also sounds like a guy’s name—but which released one of the best albums of 2014, Built On Glass. But as you’ll hear in this Talkhouse chat, Murphy put the Chet Faker name on a shelf at the height of its popularity in order to go in a more organic route under his own name. He subsequently released a pair of albums—including one initially through a meditation app, which is very 21st century and awesome. This year, he decided to bring the Chet Faker name and sound out of the attic, and he’s just released a killer new record called Hotel Surrender.

And that’s where the Belgian musicians/DJs Stephen and David Dewaele come in. The two are the principal players in a band called Soulwax, but they’ve made a massive second career as a DJ duo called 2 Many DJ’s. Back in the early aughts, 2 Many DJ’s reignited the mash-up trend with a classic mix called As Heard on Radio Soulwax Part 2. That’s right, they incorporate the name of their band right in with their other lives as DJs. They also recently opened a studio called DeeWee. Oh, and did I mention that they’re super in-demand, Grammy-nominated remixers as well? They are. And they remixed a song from the new Chet Faker album called “Whatever Tomorrow," which is what brought them together for this chat.

This intercontinental conversation—Murphy is Australian but lives in New York, the Dewaele brothers are from Belgium—gets into a lot of great stuff really quickly, including the confusing but smart way both acts can diversify, how Murphy initially found the whole idea of EDM distasteful, and a little something called “spacebar energy.” I won’t tell you what it is, but I’ll say that you probably want your songs to have it. 

0:00 – Intro

2:23 – Start of the chat

5:20 – Live versions of dance music with drummers

11:28 – How Murphy initially found the whole idea of EDM distasteful

13:40 – "spacebar energy" and Chet vs. Nick

19:10 – "brick walls"

22:57 – How Soulwax work creatively

28:35 – Active vs. passive listening

34:38 – We're "naive romantics"

38:22 – "great people try and push you"

Thanks for listening to the Talkhouse Podcast and thanks to Nick, Stephen, and David for chatting. Check out their various guises—you won’t be disappointed. This week’s episode was produced by Melissa Kaplan, and special thanks to Keenan Kush for stepping in to record it. The Talkhouse theme song is composed and performed by the Range.