David Shrigley, the ever-genial 39 year old artist, illustrator, satirist and ironist, has been a figure in the international art scene for over a decade, though he’s probably known by most for his work shown beyond the confines of the paradigmatic four white walls of the gallery. For example his video work for Blur’s ‘Good Song’, his books (most notably ‘Ants Have Sex In Your Beer’, ‘Human Achievement’ and ‘The Book Of Shrigley’) and his weekly pieces in The Guardian’s Weekend supplement have all added to his popularity.


His absurdist sense of humour and unassuming style has also touched the heart of the music world. Earlier this year he added to the Late Night Tales canon after being commissioned for the spoken word opus Late Night Tales: Forced To Speak With Others, and now he’s released ‘Worried Noodles’ on Tomlab. The record is a massive collaborative effort seeing 39 different musicians, from David Byrne and Deerhoof to Psapp and Hot Chip, re-conceive his words into exclusive, thoroughly enjoyable and incredibly diverse songs. The double CD is out now, but it’s all about the limited edition triple LP boxset that comes complete with a 106-page hardback book of Shrigley’s work. So necessary.

I know you have your ‘Worried Noodles’ album out now, but there was another ‘Worried Noodles’ LP of spoken word out beforehand also?
Yes. I made a record last year which was a spoken word record. It hasn’t really got anything to do with this one, it’s just a coincidence really, but they came about in the same way in the sense that it was kind of an accidental thing rather than design. I did a Late Night Tales [‘Late Night Tales: Forced To Speak With Others’] for Azuli. In retrospect it’s quite a curious thing to do, but they asked me to write something. I left it until the last minute as usual, and there wasn’t time to get an actor, so I performed it myself. I wasn’t really into my voice, as most people tend not to be, so I got my friend, whom I used to be in a band with, to accompany me. They liked the pieces and asked us to do an album. My friend Martin Young and I spent the entire summer making this record, which we’re both quite pleased with, but it didn’t get any publicity at all. Which is fair enough, it’s not like we’re making music. We might make another one next year. It might be with a different label though.

There were only 500 copies made, weren’t they?
Yes, it was a very limited release and whether it’s still available I don’t know. For me, it was a really interesting project. Because it’s spoken word, it has a narrative aspect to it, so it fitted in a little bit with what I was doing with films and stuff, working with actors. I enjoyed it, it was a good experience.

So are you feeling more comfortable having your work relayed orally as well as visually?
Well yeah, I think so. I haven’t got any real aspirations to be a kind of musician; I don’t think we’ll ever take the spoken word thing on tour. Though now it doesn’t seem as alien a proposition as it would have done before having doing so. It kind of fits somehow, I’m not sure how but we’re going to do it again, so that must mean something.

Did you play a part in choosing the musicians on ‘Worried Noodles’, or was it left to Tomlab?
I chose some, but I think I chose the ones just out of nepot-ism because I knew they would probably say yes. Like Franz Ferdinand are friends of mine and Aidan Moffat is also a friend of mine who did something. It was just practical really. I was quite pleased that Tomlab really wanted to do it, because if it were bands that I really like, in terms of interpreting the project, it probably wouldn’t have worked. I’m really into Japanese noise and things and that really wouldn’t have been appropriate. It probably would have been interesting, but not really for the project. Tomlab has a bit of an indie pop bias to it, so that kind of worked. It’s only now it’s sort of done I realise who I should have asked. I should have asked Neil Diamond. Good voice.

So you were quite happy with how it turned out?
Yeah, it was a brilliant project to do. It will be a long time before I have any objective overview of the work and the songs because they’re so personal. I can never quite get over the fact that people have recorded my lyrics. This is such a peculiar thing to happen to you. I went through a period of getting sent these MP3 files by David Byrne and others almost every week for nine months. That was an amazing thing and I’m sad it’s over really.

Are there any tracks on the compilation that especially stand out for you?
I think it’s bad politics to say I have a favourite, but the one that made me laugh the most was Simon Bookish’s rendition of ‘Prince Of Wales’. He sounds like I wish I did when I sing.

Finally, I’m sure you’ve noticed as you’ve become more popular that art students seem to have taken your work to be a ‘style’ or ‘genre’ of sorts. How do you find that?
I feel guilty about it. I want to take them to one side and tell them that’s it’s not a genre and they should find other things to do. They should have a different role model, somebody like Martin Creed or Wolfgang Tillmans. Don’t do what I do. Do as I say. That’s what my father always used to say, whilst smoking a cigar. I have to say, whenever you see people trying to do the same thing as you, it fills my heart with despair. Not for them but for myself. It’s like the worst kind of sarcasm. If you really want to put someone down, just do what they do, but ever so slightly worse. So it illustrates the kind of thing they do, but it looks as though they’re looking into a slightly spastic mirror.

J Saintil, Electronic Beats, Winter 2007