Kicking off the traditional all-night Fuji Rock event held on Saturday of the festival was 2manydjs, a pioneering duo of Belgian brothers Stephen and David Dewaele, who back in 1999 started a DJ show called ‘Hang The DJ.’

Early on, the duo took inspiration from Grandmaster Flash and focused mainly on vinyl, also cutting their own mixtapes, which started to draw international acclaim. The group diced and sliced 45s with precision, bringing new interpretation to the previously recorded work. The duo later morphed into the band Soulwax, but at their heart they were still always DJs. 

At one point, an album release reached the British Top 40, but that was light years ago, prior to the EDM explosion, and now the band are starting to catch up. It was clear that the DJ duo had one mission on Saturday, and that was to get the crowd dancing. Starting with Iggy Stooge’s “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” the band riffed in various directions, even coming around to Franky Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax,” which was very well received by the audience.

2mandjs were instrumental in defining a path forward for electronic music, earning chart-topping records and spawning many to follow, such as Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, and Gorillaz. While this was their past, the reality of a 2manydjs show is a thundering sound system that is as thundering as it is loud. Decibel levels verged on the unsafe, though colorful projections did keep many in the audience engaged.