‘We see pop as a vehicle to say something’: meet club provocateurs Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul

The Ghent duo’s addictive songs bring playful humour to heavy topics. They talk friendship, signing with Soulwax and Belgian colonial atrocities

The backbone of Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul’s song Haha is the sound of Adigéry’s laughter spliced into a persistent refrain, a sound occasionally interjected with the phrase: “Guess you had to be there.” It’s as catchy as it is unsettling. The Ghent-based dance music duo want to make listeners dance – but they’re also not afraid of making them squirm with their pointed and drily funny politicised lyrics.

And yet, Adigéry was surprised when a white woman told them recently that she had been joyously dancing in her kitchen to another song, Blenda, until she realised they were singing about xenophobia (“Go back to your country where you belong,” Adigéry sings on the track) and suddenly felt uncomfortable. “I said maybe it’s not that bad that you knew you’d feel awkward,” says Adigéry. “[Maybe] that’s a new way to start empathising.”

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by Kadish Morris via Electronic music | The Guardian