E Talking (Nite Version)

The device

Second single from Nite Versions, released 17 January 2005. Production and remix: the Dewaeles, DFA-adjacent (the LCD Soundsystem / DFA Records circuit is then Soulwax’s American cousin). Added vocal: Nancy Whang, keyboardist and vocalist of LCD Soundsystem and The Juan MacLean, who lays a parallel line over the original voice. Official video shot at Fabric, canonical London club.

The track reaches #27 UK singles — Soulwax’s biggest radio success, higher than anything the band did before or after. Irony: a remix beats all the originals.

Structure

Extended form relative to the Day Version (Any Minute Now, 2004). Length ~6 min (vs 4 min on the original). Prolonged intro: bass enters alone for 16 bars, then drums, then saturated guitar. The drop to the chorus is made to wait — impatience is fabricated. Whang’s voice enters around mid-track, complicates Stephen Dewaele’s vocal line through counter-chant.

The bridge is almost entirely instrumental, built on a progressive synth rise preparing the kick fall into the final chorus. The structure of a house track stretched around a pop-rock song.

The procedure — self-remix as rewriting

The Nite Version is not decoration. It is a structural rewriting. On the Day Version (album), E Talking is 4 minutes, classic pop structure. On the Nite Version, 6 minutes, club structure.

The Dewaeles apply to their own material the method they would apply to a remix for someone else:

• tempo slightly faster
• kick reinforced, sidechain added
• extended intro (DJ-friendly thinking)
• bridge lengthened, more abstract
• outro dissolving rather than ending cleanly
• added external vocal (Nancy Whang) to thicken the line

This is exactly what they will do for LCD Soundsystem, MGMT or Robbie Williams in 2007-2010 remixes. The method is here, tested on themselves first.

The arrangement

Tempo ~125 BPM (vs ~118 BPM Day Version). Likely A minor key [TO VERIFY]. Strict 4/4 grid, punchy kick with light sidechain. Synth lead (probably Roland SH-101 or Juno-60, typical Dewaele at the time [TO VERIFY]) carries the instrumental hook. Bass replayed more aggressive. Saturated guitar, still present, mixed further back than on the Day Version — club over rock.

Nancy Whang vocal: recorded separately (she’s in New York on DFA sessions, sends her takes), integrated into the mix by the Dewaeles. Her line parallels Stephen’s, sometimes in unison, sometimes counter-chant, adding a feminine texture that breaks the pop-rock virility of the original.

Lineage and resonances

Upstream: the club version practice exists since 70s disco (12” long mixes, Tom Moulton). The Dewaeles add the gesture of full self-remix — not a club version here and there, but the whole album reconceived. The closest kinship is DFA (James Murphy and Tim Goldsworthy reworking the same material from multiple angles for LCD Soundsystem), with whom Soulwax share the scene.

Downstream: the Nite Version concept becomes generic. Electro labels commission “nite versions” on anything in the late 2000s. But few succeed at what E Talking does: take an already finished pop song and make it even more club-effective, without betraying it. Most imitated “nite versions” are lazy remixes.

For Soulwax, E Talking (Nite Version) is the proof that will legitimise the entire remix decade that follows. If their own track becomes better in their own hands, then they can apply the method to others. LCD Soundsystem (Get Innocuous!), MGMT (Kids), Robbie Williams (Lovelight #1 UK) will follow.

Reading under the permanences

Permanence 1 — The DJ-set thinks the album: technical demonstration. Nite Versions is designed to be played in continuous set — and E Talking (Nite Version) is the test track. Extended DJ-friendly intro, lengthened bridge, outro dissolving: each structural choice places it in transition logic. A DJ can mix it in on 16 bars, drop a track over it, mix it out on 16 bars. A functional object, not just a work.

Permanence 2 — Friction as writing: friction with oneself. The Dewaeles take their own track and rub it against what it could have been if they themselves had received it to remix. The result beats the original — which poses a philosophical question: if a song’s best version is its self-remix, what does that say about the original? Dewaele answer: the original is a draft, the remix is the form. An anti-romantic position grounding the whole work.

Why this track and not another: this is where Soulwax prove their method works. And it is the radio track that makes them known beyond the club scene — #27 UK is a decisive number. After E Talking (Nite Version), the duo is no longer “a Belgian rock band” or “a confidential mashup duo”: it is an electro-rock project that counts, recognised by the mainstream industry.

Critique + listening — key and precise machines to verify