King Worldwide is run by Peter King, who works out of a rural location in Ashburton, New Zealand carving clear polycarbonate discs into records on a series of lathe-cutting device. He has been operation since the late 1980's when he began the business out of Geraldine, New Zealand. King has been contracted by hundreds, perhaps thousands of bands, musicians and labels to document their work in small runs. The format is not of the quality of a conventionally well mastered and pressed record (though Peter has made substantial improvements in the quality of sound in the past several years), but the operation has afforded many artists without aspirations towards stardom or the resources to sell 500 or 1,000 records, a means to get just enough records to suit their needs. Additionally, it has given several more popular artists an opportunity to do small runs of records for fans and friends.
Peter King is said to have custom built each lathe out of various electronics and washing machine parts. I can’t vouch for the truth of this, but there’s little doubt that King is a tremendously inventive and imaginative guy.
King Worldwide can produce runs of as few as 20 records with or without labels, King can also produce Picture Discs as well as laser printed picture sleeves on request (see the ordering pages for information of costs). Unfortunately, runs of less that 20 are not cost effective, so orders of just a few records are unavailable.
Since 1989, Peter King has cut records for for bands both unknown and internationally reknown. Among the artists whose work has been carved on the King lathe discs are The Beastie Boys, Pavement, Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Alastair Galbraith, Robert Scott of The Clean and The Bats, The Dead C., David Kilgour of The Clean, Thela, Rosy Parlane, Surface Of The Earth, Glide (Will Seargent of Echo & The Bunnymen), No Neck Blues Band, Tarentel, Experimental Audio Research (E.A.R.), Reynols, Jad Fair, Six Organs of Admittance, Wat Tyler, Kiwi Animal, Gate, A Handful Of Dust, Birchville Cat Motel, members of Acid Mothers Temple, RST, Harry Pussy and mountains more.
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