PIG

Raymond Watts, who performs under the name Pig, was one of the founding members of the performance art ensemble originally known as Kein Mehrheit für die Mitleid, which would only later develop a more musical focus and become known as KMFDM. He left that band in its early stages and, as Pig, released a number of albums. The first few were issued on the Wax Trax! label, including the 1988 single “Never for Fun” and his debut LP, A Poke in the Eye…with a Sharp Stick, which also came out in 1988. He followed with Praise the Lard in 1991. The early albums represented the influences that he was under while living in Germany and doing work for bands like Einstürzende Neubauten. He would soon form a relationship with an A&R man at Alfa Entertainment, which released his albums The Swining and Red Raw & Sore. When Watts’ A&R contact moved to Victor, Watts followed and issued several albums through them, including the 1995 full-length Sinsation (Nothing Records). That year, he also returned to KMFDM to help them record their seventh album, Nihil. Wrecked arrived in 1996 on Wax Trax!/TVT. The music featured on Watts’ albums evolved over the years to become increasingly complex, incorporating German, British, and Japanese pop music elements and a variety of electronic idioms. In 1999, Cleopatra Records re-released the two Alfa albums as a single volume, resurrecting one of the strongest periods in his career. Genuine American Monster was issued the same year. The No One Gets Out of Her Alive EP followed in 2000. Four years later, Watts released the hard-rocking Pigmartyr under his own Watts name, producing a remastered version titled Pigmata that arrived in 2005. Watts would sideline the Pig project for a decade, returning in 2015 with a pair of collaborative EPs (Compound Eye Sessions with Marc Heal and Long in the Tooth with Primitive Race). His eighth LP, The Gospel, was released in 2016, with a remix LP, Swine & Punishment, landing in 2017. ~ Stacia Proefrock & Neil Z. Yeung