Is It Always Binary
Single from From Deewee. Bright synth lead, hammered live drums, slogan-chorus voice. The track that makes the continuous album readable as a single.
The device
Single from From Deewee, released as an official video in spring 2017. Production, mix, mastering: DEEWEE studio in Ghent. The whole album was recorded in a single live take — meaning Is It Always Binary was played continuously, between two other tracks, by the extended Dewaele group + seven guest musicians. No post-session overdubs. What you hear is what was played that day, in that order.
Structure
Three-part structure: synth + drums intro (16 bars), body with chorus-voice (several 16-bar cycles), long instrumental break, final chorus return. Length ~5 minutes 20. No classic pop verse-chorus: a dominant chorus, repeated with variations, without traditional verse.
The chorus poses the title-question:
“Is it always binary?”
Minimalist text, almost slogan. Open interpretation — the binarity at stake could be gender, digital information, politics, forced choice. Ambiguity is the text.
The procedure — captured live
The real device of Is It Always Binary is not musical — it is capture. From Deewee was recorded in one take, nine musicians in a circle, the Dewaeles at the console live. The track was therefore played as if it were the 5th piece of a concert, in continuity with those before and after.
This changes the nature of listening. On classic studio production, each track is an isolated object — mixed for itself, mastered for itself. Here, Is It Always Binary carries traces of its context: you hear (with attentive ear) that the drums come from another groove just ended, that the synth lead builds on a pad inherited from the previous track. Not a flaw, the project.
The arrangement
Tempo ~120 BPM. Minor key — probably F# minor or G minor [TO VERIFY]. Elements: main synth lead (Prophet or Juno analog — coherent with DEEWEE practice), hammered live drums (powerful 4/4 kick, 16th-note hi-hat, snare on 2-4), synth bass (Moog possible), Stephen Dewaele’s voice direct on chorus, overlay choirs from several musicians present in session, minimal guitar in the break.
Live mixing: unified but not crushed compression, stereo present but not aggressive, residual tape saturation from the DEEWEE chain. The whole sounds warm, band, not programmed. The intended effect.
Lineage and resonances
Upstream: the live-in-studio tradition (Motown 60s, Muscle Shoals 70s, Neu! 70s on the electronic side) + the new generation applying it to club (Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories 2013 with Nile Rodgers in live session). The Dewaeles radicalise: not just a few tracks live, the whole album live in one take.
Downstream: From Deewee and singles like Is It Always Binary influence the European scene around DEEWEE — Charlotte Adigéry will extend the idea in her own albums. Live-in-studio practices return to fashion in the 2020s with other artists (Jungle, Black Midi).
For Soulwax themselves, Is It Always Binary is the album track that can still work as a single. The bet: can an album designed to be listened to in full produce detachable tracks? The video proves it can. Radio success confirms.
Reading under the permanences
Permanence 1 — The DJ-set thinks the album: here, the ultimate reversal. Before, the Dewaeles took the DJ-set format and made an album of it (As Heard on Radio Soulwax Pt. 2) or remixed their album into a set (Nite Versions). In From Deewee, they take the concert format — nine musicians in a circle, played in real time — and make an album-set of it. Three layers stacked: DJ-set, studio-live-set, album. The permanences carried to their consequence.
Permanence 2 — Friction as writing: friction in real time. Nine musicians + two producers at the console, all together, with no post-correction possible. Collision happens on the instant. If a musician messes up, the take is lost. The Dewaeles play the album three times in one day; the third take is the one where no one messes up. Friction becomes collective discipline, not studio fabrication.
Why this track and not another: Is It Always Binary is the From Deewee track that proves the live-in-one-take method can produce an effective pop song, not just a long instrumental. The Dewaeles could have kept their album radical and illegible as singles; they chose to do both — radical by capture, accessible by form. That productive tension is the track’s subject, as much as its music.
Listening — key and precise machines to verify