Like many visual artists, David Shrigley takes inspiration from music and applies it within his art. The Glasgow-based painter and conceptionalist is not only a huge fan of indie-rock from the likes of Drag City, Tomlab and, of course, the Sound Of Glasgow, he’s also become something of a fixture and friend among the musicians whose work inspires him. But there’s more: he’s now actually crossed the line and become a musician himself. Real music, real kick-ass concepts.
But back this up. Most indie rock listeners discovered Shrigley’s work through his video pieces for Bonnie Prince Billy („Agnes“) and Blur („Good Song“). Both acts loved Shrigley’s black humour, his ability to blend high socio-political comment with edgy but fun cartooning. The video requests just kept coming, and he turned out to be a great cipher for the artists’ work - bringing out the personal, the psychological and the particular in a blur of fast moving lines. Undoubtedly there’s a joy in this darkness.
The last few years have seen Shrigley exhibiting all over the world, in a veritable blizzard of activity. So you kind of wonder how in hell he even finds time for “side projects”. We wondered too. But as we discovered the man is energy plus direction - he gets the job done.
His first self-penned music effort was in partnership with the Cologne-based label Tomlab: a unique album project for which he draw the artwork, wrote the lyrics and hand-picked the acts to play his songs. The result „Worried Noodles (The empty sleeve)“ came with a 48-page art book - a really nice collaboration, but one which only piqued his interest in taking next logical step - making his own music.
Which brings us to the third edition of Fieber which features Shrigley himself ("Shrigley Forced to Speak with Others") on one single along with a second single by San Francisco´s most excellent garage band Thee Oh Sees - and of course the artwork is pure Shrigley. Better yet, this workaholic has also promised individual designs for each of the 200 packages. Every work is signed and numbered by David Shrigley, so make sure you reserve yourself a Shrigley original.
Shrigley Forced To Speak With Others
This project is a collaboration between DS and his old pal Martin Young. They have both been working before on the 2007 spoken word album "Shrigley Forced To Speak With Others". This is their first new musical piece since then. Lyrics written and recorded by DS, music by MY.
“The Tree“
“Bong Your Dong Against The Gong“
Thee Oh Sees
Based in San Francisco, California, Thee Oh Sees are one of todays finest and wildest garage bands. Since the mid 2000s musical head and songwriter John Dwyer has been busy recording plenty of fabolous 7"s and Albums among touring the world. Dwyer got introduced to Shrigley´s work by Edition Fieber´s Jan Lankisch in 2007 when he was visiting San Francisco. Likewise Jan introduced DS to John´s music and they became huge fans of both of their works. Dwyer has written these two songs exclusively for Shrigley and this edition. With adding a certain "german feel" Dwyer said.