PIG (band)

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PIG
Raymond Watts
Raymond Watts
Background information
Origin London, United Kingdom
Genre(s) Industrial
Years active 1988–present
Label(s) Metropolis Records
Wax Trax! Records
TVT Records
Nothing Records
Blue Noise Records
Grand Recordings
Cleopatra Records
Alfa Records
Concrete Records
Contempo Records
Invitation Records
Victor Entertainment
Rock Records
Website Official site


For other meanings of Pig, see Pig (disambiguation).

Raymond Watts (also known as Nainz, Nainz Watts, and Ray Scaballero) is the founding and sole member of the industrial music project PIG.

Raymond was an early member and periodic collaborator of KMFDM, and has been a visible part of the industrial music scene since the early 1980s. He has toured with KMFDM, Nine Inch Nails, Schaft, Schwein, and Einstürzende Neubauten.

According to the official website, PIG is currently in the studio recording a new album.

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[edit] Style

PIG's sound tends to run to the orchestral, with darker, more complex, more ambient beats than those of KMFDM. His album and song titles tend to be witty, rife with alliteration ("Prayer Praise & Profit") or are plays on the titles of popular works or phrases (The Swining / "Symphony for the Devil"). He also manages to work food or pork related terms into his albums.

[edit] Collaboration with KMFDM

Because Raymond Watts is a central figure in both PIG and KMFDM, the two projects have seen much crossover. Watts has contributed his skills as a songwriter and vocalist to several KMFDM albums, including their first album Opium in 1984, and has a heavy presence on their 1995 album Nihil, which spawned their hit "Juke Joint Jezebel", a song that exemplifies Watts's lyrical style. KMFDM has in turn assisted Watts with his PIG projects in production and personnel. Current KMFDM guitarists Steve White and Jules Hodgson (as well as former KMFDM guitarist Günter Schulz) and drummer Andy Selway have been involved with PIG. Sometimes when Watts joins KMFDM as part of the touring lineup, the concerts are billed as "KMFDM featuring PIG" and perform a few PIG songs.

Watts (along with White, Hodgson, and Selway) was immortalized in the lyrics to the KMFDM song "Intro" from the 2003 album WWIII. The song offers tongue-in-cheek depictions of KMFDM members as well as solidifying their places in the band's ever-rotating lineup:

The Lord of Lard, the Mighty Swine
He loves Manchego and a bottle of wine
Also known as Raymond Watts,
He screams out his lungs while his brain slowly rots!

[edit] Other collaborations

Watts has worked with several industrial and avant-garde artists, receiving credits as PIG and Raymond Watts interchageably. He is also credited as "Nainz Watts" or "Nains Watts" on several early releases.

  • from 1984 to 1986 Watts was sound engineer for Mona Mur.
  • Watts recorded music for ex-girlfriend spoken-word artist Sow (b. Anna Wildsmith)'s 1994 album Je M'Aime and again for her 1998 album Sick. The former was reissued under the name "Pig/Sow" in 1999.
  • Japanese-based band Schaft employed Watts as a lyricist/vocalist for the 1994 album Switchblade and companion remix collection Switch.
  • In 2001, Watts and KMFDM frontman Sascha Konietzko teamed up with Japanese musicians Sakurai Atsushi and Imai Hisashi (also of Schaft) to form the group Schwein. Due in part to PIG's popularity in Japan the group was well-received, although they disbanded shortly after as each member had commitments to other projects.

[edit] Discography

Several of his albums were originally released in Japan, where he enjoyed considerably more success than in the United States and United Kingdom, but some of those albums were eventually released in the US.

In 2004 he signed to Grand Recordings for distribution in the UK, under the name "Watts".

Partial PIG discography:

[edit] External links

In other languages