Post by thepigpen on Mar 7, 2008 19:50:47 GMT -5
This is an old interview I used to have on the old Pig Pen site. The guy wrote me and asked me to take it down He said one day he'd send me an extended version, but never did. Anyway, I think it's been offline for years now. Found an old copy in the harddrive vaults...
Release Magazine (?/?/98)
A meeting with Raymond Watts
The name of Raymond Watts probably doesn't mean a lot to you. Still, this englishman has been present through almost the entire history of "industrial" music. He has been a sound-technician for Einstürzende Neubauten, co-operated with Psychic TV and Foetus, been part of founding KMFDM and, above all, he has released a whole lot of solo material under the name of Pig. It was high time for Novelty to take a closer look at Watts' motley career.
"We'll suck tonight. We always do."
Raymond Watts is frustrated. He's being interviewed by a finnish fanzine-writer when he suddenly turns to me and exclaims the above. The location is a pub in Stockholm, and I'm waiting for my turn to have a chat with Mr Watts.
In one and a half hour he will, together with his recently assembled liveband, perform on stage. Once we get on with the interview, he proves to be very dissatisfied.
"In my head, I have a clear vision of what I want Pig to be live. I don't want just songs or expressions. I want the show to be a fantastic, huge, dirty machine. I want to chew your lips to bits, I want to chew MY lips. I want to smash my waves against those damn rocks of misunderstanding, and I want to break them. You know, in my head..there is something SO big. I want everything! I want the power of Pantera, but the emotional strength of Marlow, and I want the cheap gaudiness from Las Vegas. But there are four of us to make it happen, and it's just not possible. It's so hard."
The same frustration Raymond Watts shows here goes like a thread not only through this interview, but through basically all of his musical career. This was introduced in the early eighties when he started making tape-loops and some studio-work for industrial collective Psychic TV. Some time later, it took off for real in connection with him moving to Hamburg and becoming a sound-technician for Einstürzende Neubauten, with a reputation of destroying PA-devices. Unfortunately, Watts isn't in the mood for talking about that period right now.
"Ach, I don't know. There isn't much to tell" he mutters.
But how did you end up starting making music?
"Hell, I don't know...I started making music 'cos it seemed to be something that could give me some kind of sense of mental health. I mean, what the heck are you writing for? I started making music, but then I realized I don't like music. I hate the people in the music business, I don't feel comfortable there. But, I had a friend named Jon Caffery who was a producer for Einstürzende Neubauten. He introduced me to their music, and it was the first time I really felt inspired by something. I can't describe how much that meant to me. And I really wanted to be a part of that and make something of my own. At the same time I hated England, so I moved to Germany."
It was in Hamburg Watts came in contact with Sascha Konietzko, who earlier had mostly been harrowing in various punk bands, but had also started a performance-art and music group called Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid. Together, the two of them brought KMFDM's (as the group came to be called) music to a more structured level. They recorded the noisy debut album "What Do You Know, Deutschland?", which let funk, punk, and industrial noise collide, in Raymond Watts' basement-studio, with some help from Sascha's friend En Esch and the dutch artist Jr. Blackmale. Watts also participated on half the sequel "Don't Blow Your Top" which was released in 1988. Then his perpetual agitation forced him to move on.
After Watts had left KMFDM he came in contact with exile- australian Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell. He got a place behind the sampler in Thirlwell's liveband. Later during 1988 Watts released the solo album "A Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick" under the name of Pig. There, you can clearly hear that Foetus has been a major source of inspiration for his own work. In a lot of his work, Watts put together a great number of musical styles, but with an end-result that is still surprisingly unitary.
"Jim Thirlwell was a great support and very inspiring. He taught me plenty."
You're using a little of the same musical formula as he is.
"I don't care what people say about that." Watts exclaims, apparently a bit provoced by the question. "He inspired me and I admire him a whole fucking lot. He was years ahead of everyone else."
The debute breathes jazz, funk and rock, assimilated to perverted industry-pop, and gives a somewhat trembling impression, but still offers many good songs and gives a good insight to how Pig works.
It would take three years for the next Pig album to come out. Once it did, Watts had developed his abilities a great deal. 1991's "Praise the Lard" is the definite highlight of Raymond Watts' musical creations. He took the intentions from the debute and pushed them to the limit. The record is like a bubbling melting-pot of the western musical culture. Samples from classical music are combined with hard electronic rhythms. Heavy guitars lie side by side with insane jazz-blows. Watts is using clichés from all possible directions - like yelling "be bop a lula" in "Gravy Train" - and the result is playfull, humouristic and loaded with black self-irony. The songs are extremely modulated and complex, but still have a tremendous sense of directness. Like someone would mate Skinny Puppy with The Rolling Stones.
It's remarkable what minimal equipment "Praise The Lard" was created with.
"I made "Praise The Lard" all by myself, in a room about the size of this table." Watts says and makes gestures to the table we're sitting at. "I had an 8- channel tape-recorder, a few effects, a microphone, no amplifiers and a sampler with two megabytes of memory. I borrowed the rest. I had no money and hardly any equipment, so the album costed nothing to record."
How do you feel about that album now?
"It is really the ultimate Pig album. Sure, there are some parts where I failed completely with what I wanted to do, but I don't really care if I achieve everything or not. You still understand what I'm trying to do, and that feels more human. If I had made the perfect album, something I was completely satisfied with, I would stop making music."
Raymond Watts' life seems to have been just as chaotic as his ferocious music. Besides having lived in Germany and later returned to England, he has also spent some time in Japan. It is also the only country some of his records have been released in.
He has also co-operated with a big number of other musicians. Most known is his re-entry as singer on KMFDM's album "Nihil" from 1995. Watts was something of a central figure on KMFDM's "Beat by Beat" tour the same year. He also recorded some twisted, jazzy instrumental music with Jim Thirlwell for the albums "Quilombo!" and "Gondwaland" under the cover Steroid Maximus.
"I think it's liberating to work with other musicians, 'cos then I won't have to take all the responsibility for the end-result." Watts commments.
Karl Hyde, guitarist and singer of flumtechnoband Underworld, played guitar on the album "The Swining". On the latest two albums, he has been replaced by Monkey Mafia member Steve White, who also stands for a part of the programming in Pig, and probably is the closest Watts can get to a second member. Mr White probably has quite a lot to do with Pig's music having taken a slightly straighter - more rock, less chaos - shape on the latest releases.
But on the latest minialbum "No One Gets Out of Her Alive" the music is once again chaotic and fed with bone-crunching orchestral samples. Watts tells me a new album is being recorded, but he has no idea what the future will look like.
"I don't even know if I will release another album, so it's impossible for me to sit here and and say what Pig will sound like in the future. Pig has never been an object for making a career. Pig is like a funny little animal living in a corner of my life. Sometimes I sit on the animal and ride it, but most of the time Pig is some kind of garbage bin where I throw all the crap so I won't have to deal with it."
by Patrick Ekström (http://hem.fyristorg.com/eoin/watts.htm)
Release Magazine (?/?/98)
A meeting with Raymond Watts
The name of Raymond Watts probably doesn't mean a lot to you. Still, this englishman has been present through almost the entire history of "industrial" music. He has been a sound-technician for Einstürzende Neubauten, co-operated with Psychic TV and Foetus, been part of founding KMFDM and, above all, he has released a whole lot of solo material under the name of Pig. It was high time for Novelty to take a closer look at Watts' motley career.
"We'll suck tonight. We always do."
Raymond Watts is frustrated. He's being interviewed by a finnish fanzine-writer when he suddenly turns to me and exclaims the above. The location is a pub in Stockholm, and I'm waiting for my turn to have a chat with Mr Watts.
In one and a half hour he will, together with his recently assembled liveband, perform on stage. Once we get on with the interview, he proves to be very dissatisfied.
"In my head, I have a clear vision of what I want Pig to be live. I don't want just songs or expressions. I want the show to be a fantastic, huge, dirty machine. I want to chew your lips to bits, I want to chew MY lips. I want to smash my waves against those damn rocks of misunderstanding, and I want to break them. You know, in my head..there is something SO big. I want everything! I want the power of Pantera, but the emotional strength of Marlow, and I want the cheap gaudiness from Las Vegas. But there are four of us to make it happen, and it's just not possible. It's so hard."
The same frustration Raymond Watts shows here goes like a thread not only through this interview, but through basically all of his musical career. This was introduced in the early eighties when he started making tape-loops and some studio-work for industrial collective Psychic TV. Some time later, it took off for real in connection with him moving to Hamburg and becoming a sound-technician for Einstürzende Neubauten, with a reputation of destroying PA-devices. Unfortunately, Watts isn't in the mood for talking about that period right now.
"Ach, I don't know. There isn't much to tell" he mutters.
But how did you end up starting making music?
"Hell, I don't know...I started making music 'cos it seemed to be something that could give me some kind of sense of mental health. I mean, what the heck are you writing for? I started making music, but then I realized I don't like music. I hate the people in the music business, I don't feel comfortable there. But, I had a friend named Jon Caffery who was a producer for Einstürzende Neubauten. He introduced me to their music, and it was the first time I really felt inspired by something. I can't describe how much that meant to me. And I really wanted to be a part of that and make something of my own. At the same time I hated England, so I moved to Germany."
It was in Hamburg Watts came in contact with Sascha Konietzko, who earlier had mostly been harrowing in various punk bands, but had also started a performance-art and music group called Kein Mehrheit Für Die Mitleid. Together, the two of them brought KMFDM's (as the group came to be called) music to a more structured level. They recorded the noisy debut album "What Do You Know, Deutschland?", which let funk, punk, and industrial noise collide, in Raymond Watts' basement-studio, with some help from Sascha's friend En Esch and the dutch artist Jr. Blackmale. Watts also participated on half the sequel "Don't Blow Your Top" which was released in 1988. Then his perpetual agitation forced him to move on.
After Watts had left KMFDM he came in contact with exile- australian Jim "Foetus" Thirlwell. He got a place behind the sampler in Thirlwell's liveband. Later during 1988 Watts released the solo album "A Poke in the Eye... with a Sharp Stick" under the name of Pig. There, you can clearly hear that Foetus has been a major source of inspiration for his own work. In a lot of his work, Watts put together a great number of musical styles, but with an end-result that is still surprisingly unitary.
"Jim Thirlwell was a great support and very inspiring. He taught me plenty."
You're using a little of the same musical formula as he is.
"I don't care what people say about that." Watts exclaims, apparently a bit provoced by the question. "He inspired me and I admire him a whole fucking lot. He was years ahead of everyone else."
The debute breathes jazz, funk and rock, assimilated to perverted industry-pop, and gives a somewhat trembling impression, but still offers many good songs and gives a good insight to how Pig works.
It would take three years for the next Pig album to come out. Once it did, Watts had developed his abilities a great deal. 1991's "Praise the Lard" is the definite highlight of Raymond Watts' musical creations. He took the intentions from the debute and pushed them to the limit. The record is like a bubbling melting-pot of the western musical culture. Samples from classical music are combined with hard electronic rhythms. Heavy guitars lie side by side with insane jazz-blows. Watts is using clichés from all possible directions - like yelling "be bop a lula" in "Gravy Train" - and the result is playfull, humouristic and loaded with black self-irony. The songs are extremely modulated and complex, but still have a tremendous sense of directness. Like someone would mate Skinny Puppy with The Rolling Stones.
It's remarkable what minimal equipment "Praise The Lard" was created with.
"I made "Praise The Lard" all by myself, in a room about the size of this table." Watts says and makes gestures to the table we're sitting at. "I had an 8- channel tape-recorder, a few effects, a microphone, no amplifiers and a sampler with two megabytes of memory. I borrowed the rest. I had no money and hardly any equipment, so the album costed nothing to record."
How do you feel about that album now?
"It is really the ultimate Pig album. Sure, there are some parts where I failed completely with what I wanted to do, but I don't really care if I achieve everything or not. You still understand what I'm trying to do, and that feels more human. If I had made the perfect album, something I was completely satisfied with, I would stop making music."
Raymond Watts' life seems to have been just as chaotic as his ferocious music. Besides having lived in Germany and later returned to England, he has also spent some time in Japan. It is also the only country some of his records have been released in.
He has also co-operated with a big number of other musicians. Most known is his re-entry as singer on KMFDM's album "Nihil" from 1995. Watts was something of a central figure on KMFDM's "Beat by Beat" tour the same year. He also recorded some twisted, jazzy instrumental music with Jim Thirlwell for the albums "Quilombo!" and "Gondwaland" under the cover Steroid Maximus.
"I think it's liberating to work with other musicians, 'cos then I won't have to take all the responsibility for the end-result." Watts commments.
Karl Hyde, guitarist and singer of flumtechnoband Underworld, played guitar on the album "The Swining". On the latest two albums, he has been replaced by Monkey Mafia member Steve White, who also stands for a part of the programming in Pig, and probably is the closest Watts can get to a second member. Mr White probably has quite a lot to do with Pig's music having taken a slightly straighter - more rock, less chaos - shape on the latest releases.
But on the latest minialbum "No One Gets Out of Her Alive" the music is once again chaotic and fed with bone-crunching orchestral samples. Watts tells me a new album is being recorded, but he has no idea what the future will look like.
"I don't even know if I will release another album, so it's impossible for me to sit here and and say what Pig will sound like in the future. Pig has never been an object for making a career. Pig is like a funny little animal living in a corner of my life. Sometimes I sit on the animal and ride it, but most of the time Pig is some kind of garbage bin where I throw all the crap so I won't have to deal with it."
by Patrick Ekström (http://hem.fyristorg.com/eoin/watts.htm)