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This reality extends to Williamson's roots: While growing up in Grantham, Lincolnshire, he was expelled from secondary school for
piercing a friend's ear and began working at a factory that made ready-to-eat meals because he had no job qualifications. After a
failed attempt at being an actor, he learned to play guitar and moved to London in 1993 at the beginning of the Brit-pop craze. Two
years later, he moved to Nottingham, where he became a session musician with Spiritualized and the electronic duo Bent. He
started Sleaford Mods in 2006, spending the first few years of the project working out the band's aggressive, no-nonsense, blue-
collar sound in the studio with engineer Simon Parfrement and at occasional gigs, where he would rap over prerecorded beats and
samples. After relocating to London for a while, Williamson returned to Nottingham, and in 2009, met Andrew Fearn, a veteran
musician who was DJing at the time. The two joined forces in 2010, with Fearn taking on most of the backing tracks, freeing
up Williamson to further evolve as a vocalist and lyricist. Their first recorded collaboration was on the CD-R Wank, which appeared
in 2012. Their minimalist combination of either lo-fi drum machine beats or live drums mixed with pounding bass guitar
and Williamson's ranting wordplay set the tone that would define the band's sound.
A prominent festival appearance led to their signing with the abstract punk label Harbinger
Sound, which released Sleaford Mods' 2013 album Austerity Dogs, their first proper label release and the first to receive
widespread distribution. The record was critically well received, and Sleaford Mods' reputation and profile were raised significantly
as they toured the U.K. and Europe. Their follow-up album, Divide and Exit, was released in April 2014. That October, the
previously digital-only singles collection Chubbed Up, was given a physical release with three bonus tracks. The following month,
the duo capped off a triumphant year with the Tiswas EP, which expanded on the Divide and Exit cut with previously unreleased
tracks.