Peter King Record Manufacturing | christchurchmusic.org.nz

Lathe Cut Record Production
Contact: Peter King, Ph: +64 3 303 9755 or Mob +64 27 623 5389
35 Comyns St, Mt Somers. 1 RD Ashburton, South Canterbury, New Zealand
http://home.comcast.net/~cassetto/kingcontact.html (no email)

Peter King has been cutting his distinctive transparent records for over 20 years in his rural Ashburton workshop. King has worked with hundreds of bands, from local unknowns to international acts such as The Beastie Boys, Pavement, and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. Building each lathe-cutting device out of rough-and-tumble electronics and washing machine parts, King’s polycarbonate discs are almost artisanal, individualized works of lo-fi art.

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.

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.

Projects
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.

Video
If you're curious how Peter, who has cut records for bands such as Pavement and The Beastie Boys, makes his DIY lathe cuts, you can check out a making-of documentary in three parts on youtube [part 1, part 2, part 3] or visit his website, The Lathe Cut Universe.