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King Krule/ Zoo Kid Bio

Feb 20, 2012

17-year-old Londoner Archy Marshall has been tinkering with music equipment and creating his own sound since he was just a kid. Even though he mixes and records his songs on just his own laptop and was making music just for fun, he quickly earned an online following. Last fall he released a new EP under his new stage name, King Krule (formerly Zoo Kid) and his unique sound has caught the attention of the indie music scene. Find out more in his Kidzworld bio.

Archy Marshall started making his own music because he thought a lot of mainstream music wasn't interesting enough.

King Krule did his first U.S. shows recently.

Archy Marshall and his band in an interview with TheFader.com.

King As A Kid

Archy Marshall, or King Krule, grew up in an artistic home where experimenting with music and all kinds of arts was encouraged. He says he got his early influences from the music at parties that his mom used to throw.

He told Pitchfork: “My dad is an art director for BBC TV shows, and my mum does screen printing workshops. Both of my parents played instruments, too, and my mum used to have crazy house parties when me and my brother were young - dub and garage would be banging through my house. She listened to a lot of old-school hip-hop like De La Soul, and that influenced me quite a lot.”

King Krule first started messing around with musical equipment and making songs when he was just 8-years-old. His mother’s boyfriend brought equipment home to record dub and jazz, and Archy was immediately interested in using recording equipment and making is own songs. One of the most arresting elements of his sound is voice which he uses in an unconventional way. He never took voice lessons but when he was a kid he loved the sound of jazz greats like Chet Baker and rockers like Joe Strummer. Instead he has a sound all his own, his deep voice has been noted as having a strained almost yelping sound in his songs. His musical influences stretch all the way from big band, jazz and rockabilly to garage and East Coast rap.

Laptop Lad

When Archy recorded songs under the name Zoo Kid he was simply creating music because he thought a lot of mainstream music was boring, he wanted to do something new, just for his own amusement. Using an old Toshiba [kwlink 24639]laptop[/kwlink] with a broken battery he would illegally download beats and mix and record songs all in one night, then post them to Bandcamp or Soundcloud. He began to gain a following of music lovers online who couldn’t get enough of his strange and haunting sound.

“I had to illegally download demos of music software that only allowed you to save files for 24 hours, so I had to make every track in one night. I'd do the production and mixing in one sitting.”

FInally he ditched his old Toshiba for a shiny new MacBook and starting creating more and more sophisticated tracks.

Zoo Kid to King Krule

The video for his debut track on House Anxiety records, “Out Getting Ribs”, which is a slow song that features his unique vocal abilities, was loved by music critics and blogs. It wasn’t long before the skinny red-headed laptop musician became the indie music scene’s newest hot find, and recently he started playing his first U.S. shows in music festivals, like the CMJ Music Festival in New York. Last fall he released his first EP under his new name, King Krule.

Check out King Krule’s latest video for his track “The Noose of Jah City” here!