The King Of Woolworths by Nitricboy

Earlier this year a grotesque maelstrom of a demo entitled 'Stalker Song' began to appear all over late night national radio. It was a nasty, grimy tune full of disturbing vocal samples and hard edged cuts and loops. But the greatest thing about this apocalyptic mini-epic was that it's architect was an unsigned Mancunian called King of Woolworths who's stuff was posted up all over MP3.com and who was clearly demented…. so obviously we interviewed him!
FTT: You're from Manchester so the obvious question is do you see yourself as part of the Manchester 'scene'? I.e. is your imagination filled with images of 'dark satanic mills' or could you not give a toss?
KOW: My imagination is filled with all kinds of things - quite a lot of it dark and some of it quite the opposite. To be honest, I don't think the "Manchester scene" has much to do with the stereotype of "dark satanic mills" and all that. There is so much more to the music being made round here. A lot of my stuff has quite a dark edge to it, but I also do quite a nice line in dreamy 70's French film music. Also, if you listen to other music-makers from Manchester like Rae and Christian, and people like Badly Drawn Boy or The Fall or whatever, you can see that it's all extremely varied. It's all about contrast.

FTT: And while we're on the subject...what do you think of the current Manchester scene e.g. Twisted Nerve and all that? Do you think it's a natural progression from the Factory/Creation days or is it better/worse than that?
KOW: I like what Twisted Nerve are doing. There's also Grand Central which is hugely influential too. There are loads of other labels turning out excellent records and loads of great talent round here. There seems to be a large artistic buzz going on, which is extremely inspiring and infectious. It's a kind of progression from the Factory / Creation days, yes - in some respects. I think Andy (Votel) who runs Twisted Nerve has definitely got unique ideas about how he wants to run his label - different from the way Tony Wilson ran Factory, but just as relevant - the importance of the music is central to both labels, though. I always loved Factory and I loved Creation in the early days.

FTT: If you'd been asked to pick the music for Lady Di's funeral what would you have given them?
KOW: That's a tricky one. "The Queen is Dead" by The Smiths, probably.

FFT: What's behind the choice to remain unsigned - have you had bad experience in the past with record companies etc or are you just enjoying yourself too much at the moment?
KOW: Getting a deal has never been the all-important issue. I've always had the ethos that I wouldn't make any silly decisions and sell out to the wrong label. I'm holding off until the right label expresses an interest - I'm very picky about it, I suppose. I'm not ruling out the future - I'm keeping an open mind. I've got some quite exciting stuff happening ahead of me.

FTT: If a lazy journalist was to say, "listening to King of Woolworths is like listening to (insert name of another recording artiste here) on (insert name of illegal substance here)" how would you ideally fill in the blanks?
KOW: the artist would have to be a mixture of Brian Wilson, Keith Mansfield, St Etienne, Coldcut, and The Fall. But I reckon rather than the illegal substances, it should be frozen vodka - which is way more interesting.

FTT: So far the best way to get hold of your stuff has been the internet - is this going to continue or do you want to pursue more ' traditional' ways of distribution?
KOW: The internet and MP3 technology is a great way to distribute music and get it heard by people across the globe. Before we had the net, the only way for an artist to distribute demos was through the tried, tested and hackneyed method of crappy tapes going off to record companies - many of which may never get played. These days, an artist can get a buzz going by getting people to download in a reasonably good quality digital format. I like the idea of being able to control the whole thing from my Mac. But all this won't replace the more traditional formats like vinyl and CD in the near future because the consumer still wants to physically grab hold of a record and play it. When you buy a record you get something physical, a nice slab of vinyl with sleeve artwork and proper graphics - it's buying into a culture and belonging to it. I will always want to be able to buy records, which is why I'm getting ready to put a single out on my own label, "big sham" first of all and see how it goes. I've done a self-distributed album on CD which went down quite well so doing a proper release is the next step really.

FTT: And what about a King of Woolworths video - any chance?
KOW: The ultimate would be to get Cris Cunningham to do a video - he's done some of the best I've ever seen, with Aphex Twin. The "Windowlicker" video has to be seen to be believed. Also, I'm fortunate enough to know some video directors - one of my friends has done videos for Mr Scruff and there's Angela who used to be in World of Twist and directed all their stuff - all people who I've got a lot of respect for. You never know, I may be able to twist someone's arm.

FTT: What would be the ideal bit of King of Woolworths merchandise?
KOW: Well it'd have to be something a bit different from the usual shirts and mugs, wouldn't it? For starter's I'd like to do wooly hats with the old 1970's "Winfield" Woolworths logo on - remember that? I'd also love to do a limited run of catnip-laced cat toys that look like "zippy" from rainbow, bearing the King of Woolworths name, because I'm into cats and they seem to like my stuff. and I always loved Zippy from rainbow.

Then there's the denim flares with white piping down the outside leg and a subtle logo on the pocket. And specially for the ladies I'd really like to do KOW lingerie and high heeled shoes. It'd be great to get the groupies dressed up in all that.
Something I did when I was distributing my first CD was to wrap it in a Woolworths "pick n mix" bag and pop a promotional sweet in there as well.

That's a good little bit of merchandise. I had loads of these bags lying around as my girlfriend and I went into Woolies in Chorlton and nicked a load of them. We paid for the sweets though, just nicked the bags.