The excellent new Radio Soulwax app and website from 2manydjs is a radio station with a difference, placing visuals at the heart of the listening experience...

The app is available for use on the iPad and iPhone, and launched just over a week ago containing six hour-long mixes. Each is set to an individual theme and accompanied by bespoke visuals. 2manydjs will then add a new hour-long set to the app each week, until, in a few months' time, users of the app will have a 24-hour musical extravaganza available for their listening and viewing pleasure.

The visual element of the hour-long shows is based largely around album covers, which are manipulated and animated in a variety of ways, by a number of different directors and animators. The resulting films are witty and eminently watchable. What is particularly interesting about the project is that the films seem integral to the music, rather than just an accompaniment. The film and music come together to create a particular experience, which separately they would not achieve.

Describing the project on the website and app, 2manydjs says "we've tried to come up with something different, a new way to share music we love with you. Music is everywhere and everyone has the tools to be a musician and be a DJ, but for us as music lovers, that hasn't necessarily resulted in an equally massive explosion of mindblowing new music, so we have decided to go back to all the great little gems we have found over the years, basically a free trip through our ever-expanding record collection."

"We grew up surrounded by our dad's extensive record collection and many of our earliest memories are of record sleeves, so it only makes sense that we made this tribute to that forgotten art form, albeit in a very digital way."

Many of the films feature a highly entertaining trip through some long-lost but truly wonderful record covers (see Chevy Chase cover shown above as just one example). Other mixes feature newly shot films alongside the album sleeves, and in the Jack In The Box mix, it's the vinyl labels that take centrestage, with the words featured on the labels animated into dancing figures (see above).

There are some trailers for the Radio Soulwax app and site posted on YouTube (two are above), but for the true experience you'll need to download the app (which is free), or visit the Radio Soulwax website, where the mixes are continually streamed. With the amount of work that's clearly been put into this project, it would frankly be rude not to check it out.

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