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Pete Wiggs | |
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| Birth name | Peter Stewart Wiggs |
| Born | 15 May 1966 |
| Years active | 1990–present |
Peter Stewart Wiggs (born 15 May 1966) [1] is an English musician and DJ from Reigate, Surrey.
|
Pete Wiggs | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Peter Stewart Wiggs |
| Born | 15 May 1966 |
| Years active | 1990–present |
Peter Stewart Wiggs (born 15 May 1966) [1] is an English musician and DJ from Reigate, Surrey.
Pete Wiggs is a member of the pop/dance group Saint Etienne (alongside Bob Stanley and Sarah Cracknell) for which he co-writes songs, produces and plays keyboards on stage. With the advent of computer based digital recording in the early 2000s, Wiggs set up his home studio Needham Sound (named after Chris Needham from the BBC documentary In Bed With Chris Needham).
Wiggs has assisted in the production of several Saint Etienne film projects filmed and directed by Paul Kelly. Finisterre (2002) used the music from the band's album also titled Finisterre to create "a hymn to the dark corners and empty hallways of a great city that is subtle and artistic" – The Guardian . [2]
For their second collaboration, What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day (2005) – "an extraordinarily resonant urban pastoral" [3] filmed in London's Lower Lea Valley during the early preparations for the 2012 Olympic Games – Wiggs, Stanley and Ian Catt composed an original soundtrack which was performed live to the film at The Barbican (who had commissioned the event).
Wiggs, Stanley, Kelly and producer Andrew Hinton were 'artists in residence' at The Southbank Centre in 2006. The centrepiece of their year's residency was the film This Is Tomorrow (2007) about the history of the Southbank Centre. The film was premiered with a live performance of the score (composed by Wiggs, Stanley and Ian Catt – and conducted by Gerard Johnson) including a sixty piece orchestra at the Royal Festival Hall.
Wiggs and Stanley were commissioned to compose alternative scores for Designed in Britain (1959) and Design for Today (1965) the BFI's COI collection Volume 2 DVD and Blu-ray.
Wiggs, Stanley and Catt have provided the theme music and score for the first season of American Greetings' children's cartoon series Maryoku Yummy . [4]
In 2013, Wiggs composed and performed the score to the Paul Kelly and Saint Etienne film How We Used To Live, which was first shown at the London Film Festival. [5] The same year, Wiggs was commissioned by the British Film Institute to write a new score for 1904 silent ghost story, The Mistletoe Bough , directed by Percy Stow. [6]
In 2014, Wiggs wrote and performed the score to Year 7, which was directed by Rob Leggatt and written by Rafe Spall. The film was shortlisted for the Best UK Short Award at the 2015 London Short Film Festival. [7]
Wiggs was born in Reigate, Surrey, and has DJed since the early days of Saint Etienne, with occasional appearances at the Sunday Social and a residency at the Kahuna Burger. Wiggs and Stanley ran their own club "Don't Laugh" in the mid 1990s and hosted "Turntable Cafe" events at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2006/2007.
Wiggs co-hosts a weekly radio show, "The Séance", with James Papademetrie on Brighton's Radio Reverb and Slack City Radio, and together they put on séance DJ events.[ citation needed ]
Wiggs co-wrote four issues of fanzine CAFF in the mid 1980s with his childhood friend and fellow band member Bob Stanley and had a regular column ("Pete Wiggs' life and style") in the dance magazine Jockey Slut , from 1997 to 1998.[ citation needed ]
Wiggs was involved in the running of two record labels along with Bob Stanley: Icerink Records (1992–94) and EMIdisc (1996).
Saint Etienne are an English band from Greater London, formed in 1990. The band consists of Sarah Cracknell, Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs. They became associated with the UK's indie dance scene in the 1990s, beginning with the release of their debut album Foxbase Alpha in 1991. Their work has been described as uniting 1990s club culture with 1960s pop and other disparate influences. The name of the band comes from the French football club of AS Saint-Étienne.
Tales from Turnpike House is the seventh studio album by English alternative dance band Saint Etienne, released on 13 June 2005 by Sanctuary Records. It is a concept album in which the songs depict characters who all live in the eponymous block of flats in London.
Finisterre is the sixth studio album by English alternative dance band Saint Etienne, released on 7 October 2002 by Mantra Records. A double-disc deluxe edition was released on 3 May 2010 by Heavenly Records.
Sound of Water is an album by Saint Etienne, released in 2000. Sound of Water was developed as Saint Etienne's ambient and trip hop statement.
Foxbase Alpha is the debut studio album by English band Saint Etienne, released on 16 September 1991 by Heavenly Recordings.
Good Humor is the fourth studio album by English alternative dance band Saint Etienne. It was released on 4 May 1998 by Creation Records. The American spelling of humor is used in the title as the band were, according to Sarah Cracknell, "fed up with the 'quintessentially English' tag, so there was a bit of a backlash against that."
Places to Visit is an extended play released by British group Saint Etienne in May 1999. It shows the band moving toward the experimental electronic sound that they explored further on their next official full-length release, 2000's Sound of Water.
Tiger Bay is the third studio album by English indie dance band Saint Etienne. It was released 28 February 1994 by Heavenly Records. In an interview with Record Collector, band member Bob Stanley stated that the title is a reference to the 1959 film Tiger Bay.
Smash the System: Singles and More (2001) is a double-CD greatest hits album by Saint Etienne. The compilation samples music from most of their releases spanning the years from 1990 to 1999. Most tracks are featured in their single or edit versions, with the exception of 'Join Our Club' which is a new mix as the original sounded too 'muddy'. Smash The System was also going to be the CD debut of 'Lover Plays The Bass', but the band 'forgot' to include it.
Bob Stanley is a British musician, journalist, author, and film producer. He is a member of the indie pop group Saint Etienne and has had a parallel career as a music journalist and author, writing for NME, Melody Maker, Mojo, The Guardian and The Times, as well as writing several books on music and football. His second publication, Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Modern Pop, was published by Faber & Faber in 2013. His third publication Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop Music: A History was published by Pegasus in 2022. He also has a career as a DJ and as a producer of record labels, and has collaborated on a series of films about London.
The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough is a horror story which has been associated with many mansions and stately homes in England.
Gerard Mark Johnson is a British keyboard player. He is best known for his work with Saint Etienne, The Syn and Yes.
Too Young to Die – Singles 1990–1995 is a compilation album by English indie dance band Saint Etienne released on 13 November, 1995, collecting the group's singles spanning the period of 1990 to 1995.
"You're in a Bad Way" is a song by British pop group Saint Etienne, released in February 1993 by Heavenly and Warner as the second single from their second album, So Tough (1993). The song is a deliberately old-fashioned throwback to 1960s pop music. In an interview with Melody Maker magazine, Bob Stanley claims that it was written in ten minutes as a simple imitation of Herman's Hermits, and was only intended to be a B-side to "Everlasting", but the record company decided that it should be a single. "Everlasting" was dropped as a single and remained unreleased until it was eventually included on disc 2 on the deluxe edition of So Tough in 2009.
"He's on the Phone" is a song by British pop group Saint Etienne in collaboration with French singer-songwriter Étienne Daho, released in October 1995 by Heavenly and MCA as a single from their third compilation album, Too Young to Die (1995). A fast-paced dance track, it is one of Saint Etienne's biggest hits, reaching number 11 on the UK Singles Chart, number 31 in Iceland, number 41 in Sweden and number 33 on the US Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. The lyrics tell of an "academia girl" trying to escape from a relationship with a married man: He's on the phone / And she wants to go home, / Shoes in hand, / Don't make a sound, / It's time to go. At the centre of the track is a spoken-word section by Daho.
"Avenue" is a song by British pop group Saint Etienne, released in October 1992 as the first single from their second album, So Tough (1992). It was originally titled "Lovely Heart" or "Young Heart". The album version is a 7-minute version with lengthy instrumental sequences; it was edited down to around 4 minutes for radio play, though the commercial single contained the full-length version, with the radio edit only released on promotional material. The edit wasn't released commercially until 2005's Travel Edition 1990-2005.
"Like a Motorway" is a song by British pop group Saint Etienne. It appears on their third album, Tiger Bay (1994) and was released as a single by Heavenly Records in May 1994, reaching number 47 on the UK Singles Chart and number 13 on the UK Dance Singles Chart. The US release of Tiger Bay also features an "alternate version" with more complex percussion and electric guitar stings. It also appears on the original soundtrack for the 1994 film Speed, although the single is never heard in the actual film itself.
Kevin Pearce is a music journalist and author. He is best known for the cult music book, Something Beginning With O, published by Heavenly Records in May 1993.
Paul Kelly is an English film director, musician, photographer and designer.
Martin Kelly is a musician, music manager, record label boss, music publisher and author. Best known as Jeff Barrett's partner at Heavenly Recordings, a British independent record label run by the pair between 1993 and 2009.
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