PIG - Release phenomenal new album!!!

September 9th 2016

Release

PIG explain 'The Gospel to you'

PIG is Raymond Watts, a British musician whose brand of Electronic Rock is both danceable and deadly serious. Watts’ words spring from the well of gallows humour in a World of corruscating cruelty and truth. PIG climbs peaks and mines troughs, and music genres slide and collide like tectonic plates. In 1986 Raymond Watts awoke in West Berlin. It was a time of terror and turmoil, in a city so depraved and decadent that the East Germans had walled it in.

Watts had cut his teeth on tape loops in London and Hamburg, but inspired by Berlin's fetid air and his first eight bit sampler, he gave birth to PIG in 1988, when PIG was cut from his belly with a rusty screwdriver in a basement opposite The Wall.The first squeals were committed to tape and saw the light of day as ‘A poke in the Eye’, which the ultra hip US label Wax Trax! jumped to release.

A year earlier, in Hamburg, he was bludgeoning the first KMFDM album into shape with En Esch and Sascha Konietzko. He had also helped deliver the sonic slaughter of Einsturzende Neubauten, Psychic TV and most of the Berlin and Hamburg underground as both producer and live / studio sound engineer. After writing the music for the second KMFDM album, Watts then slipped away to tour with Foetus, playing keyboards and guitar. He returned to Berlin to produce, with Jim Thirlwell (Aka Foetus) the classic PIG 12' 'Sick City'.

Under the name 2 Kut he also made a series of 12' singles featuring the likes of Blixa Bargeld and Jim Thirlwell. When The Wall collapsed, the party was over. Watts returned to London and PIG albums poured forth: ‘Praise the Lard, ‘A stroll in the Pork, Shit for Brains, Red raw and Sore’ and ‘The Swining’. Watts programmed, produced and performed, ploughing a lone furrow until Karl Hyde, singer and sinner with Underworld, came to his assistance on guitars, followed by Steve White.

Watts had also developed a taste for all things Japanese. His label was based there, his morals were parked there and PIG had toured there many times. He was soon involved with a highly successful bunch of ne'er-do-wells called Schaft. Their album ‘Switchblade’ and a SOLD OUT!!! tour followed. In 1994 PIG opened for NIN. This led to PIG's ‘Sinsation’ album being released on Trent Reznor’s Nothing label, followed by a return to Wax Trax! for ‘Wrecked’.

Watts also rejoined KMFDM in 1994 for the PIG vs KMFDM EP ‘Sin, Sex and Salvation’. On the next KMFDM album Nihil Watts took over writing and vocal duties, spawning ‘Juke Joint Jezebel’, a massive crossover Industrial / Dance hit. Remixes of ‘Juke joint Jezebel’ by Giorgio Moroder took the single to a new crowd. Several heaving tours followed, with Watts orchestrating the chaos from centre stage like a rampant ringmaster armed only with talent and tequila.

When not on tour, Watts could be found in his Ranch Apocalypse studios in London, working on PIG’s ‘No one gets out of her Alive, Prime Evil, Disrupt degrade and Devastate’ and the KMFDM albums ‘Symbols, Attak’ and ‘WWIII’. On the album ‘Genuine American Monster’, Watts reunited with legendary guitarist Guenter Schulz. While in Toyko, Watts gave birth to the band Schwein with Sascha Konietzko and the Japanese musicians Sakurai and Imai.

The albums ‘Schweinstein, Son of Schweinstein' and a SOLD OUT!!! tour ensued. After releasing the PIG album ‘Pigmartyr’ (‘Pigmata’ on Metropolis), Watts spent time in London indoctrinating his piglets and initiating them into the parish of the pork. When not leading his children down the path of righteousness, he could be found writing music for fashion and films for Alexander McQueen, Chloe, Marios Schwab, Halston, The Row and others. He also wrote music and did sound design for ‘Punk: Chaos to Couture’, an exhibition at the Met in New York.

In the final show before his death, Alexander McQueen commissioned Watts and John Gosling (Watts’s old partner in crime from Psychic TV days) to embellish the serene instrumental track ‘Inside’, from PIG's ‘Genuine American Monster’ album. This became the soundtrack to what is seen as McQueen’s masterpiece 'Plato's Atlantis'. This show was reprised as the finale of 'Savage Beauty', the McQueen retrospective that broke all records at the Met in New York and the V&A in London. He also wrote other original music and did sound design for the show.

In 2015 PIG dipped his trotter in the trough once more and released both the lauded PIG vs Primitive Race EP ‘Long in the Tooth’ and 'Compound Eye - Sessions': PIG vs MC Lord of the Flies (Aka Marc Heal of Cubanate). The Primitive Race collaboration brought together Watts and Mark Thwaite (The Mission, Tricky, Peter Murphy), amongst many others. Together they set about writing what would become the main column of misery around which the new PIG album, ‘The Gospel’ has been built. Watts’ newest partner in swine, Z. Marr of Combichrist fame, shares production and writing duties.

The new PIG album ‘The Gospel’ is a collection of twelve songs of ruin, redemption, resolution and resurrection. Across this tale of grime and punishment En Esch and Guenter Schulz also leave their unmistakable trail of greasy fingerprints.