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Caught in the Net: Belgian brothers back in the mix

Larry Ryan
Friday 08 July 2011 00:00 BST
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Almost nine years ago the Belgian brothers David and Stephen Dewaele, using the monikers Soulwax and 2ManyDJs, helped bring the then nascent craze for "mash ups" to wider attention with their As Heard on Radio Soulwax Vol 2 mix album.

The idea swiftly got oversubscribed. Since then, they've toured the world, remixed for others and made some albums as a band, too. Their new venture is Radio Soulwax, a website and smartphone and iPad app, launched on Monday at www.radiosoulwax.com. Free to use on all formats, it begins with six hours of mixes, alongside visuals to match. Over the coming weeks, 18 hour-long mixes will be added to eventually give a full 24-hour compendium of curated, crate-digging music.

Radiohead revisited

Last Friday Radiohead unveiled the first in a series of remixes from their recent album, The King of Limbs, which will be released digitally and on vinyl. The tracks, "Little by Little", remixed by Caribou, and "Lotus Flower", remixed by Jacques Greene, can be bought via radiohead.co.uk/deadairspace, where they are also streaming. Caribou's effort is the more inventive, recasting the song to the point where it is almost unrecognisable, while Greene's take plays up the more danceable elements of the track.

Ready, steady, Cooke

Mick Cooke, the bassist and trumpeter for Belle & Sebastian, has a recorded a full album of music for children. A little over a month ago, the father of an 18 month-year-old called Ralph released Down at the Zoo, which, naturally enough, tells the musical tale of a day at the zoo. The digital only, 15-track record is available through iTunes and other online platforms. One raucous track, "We Are the Tigers", and an interview with Cooke, explaining the project, can be found at www.wearethetigers.com.

Hear it through the YouTube grapevine

Trawling YouTube can yield some old musical gems, but it's a time-consuming sport. It's easier when others do the work, and recently help came from disparate sources. On Monday, Dana Stevens the film critic of Slate magazine, tweeted (@thehighsign) a link to an amazing video of Marvin Gaye singing the US national anthem at an NBA basketball game in 1983 – ind.pn/isHMlf. Only Marvin could pull it off with such a level of cool. Over on Vampire Blues, the blog of Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley, he's been doing so me great YouTube trawling, too. Most recently he dug out a a clip for Serge Gainsbourg's "Le Poinçonneur des Lilas". The song has always been one of my Serge favourites, but only now, on seeing the video replete with subtitles, do I learn that it narrates the story of a doom-laden ticket puncher at a train station – ind.pn/mvJzN5.

l.ryan@independent.co.uk

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