Sleaford Mods

Jason Williamson is from Grantham, Lincolnshire, the town known for having been declared the most boring in the United Kingdom in the 1980s and for being the birthplace of Margaret Thatcher. The duo’s name comes from Sleaford, the nearest town with a cinema, where Williamson went as a boy. In 2022, between an album and a live date, he played Lazarus in the final episode of Peaky Blinders: a cameo that says something about the stature reached by an artist who started out releasing early CD-Rs in tiny runs.

Sleaford Mods began in 2007 in Nottingham as a near-solo project by Williamson, who rapped over pirated samples. He recorded the first four albums with Simon Parfrement at Rubber Biscuit Studio. In 2009, after a set at the Chameleon Arts Café in Nottingham, Williamson heard tracks Andrew Fearn was playing from his laptop in the basement. The two began working together. From 2012, with the album Wank, the formula settled: Williamson’s abrasive voice, in an East Midlands accent, over minimal electronic tracks built by Fearn. A looped bass, a functional drum machine, occasional keyboard riffs. On stage, Fearn stands at a laptop balanced on two milk crates and dances. Williamson channels decades of anger and the movements of a dozen predecessors into one body.

The commercial breakthrough came with Divide and Exit in 2014. Iggy Pop called them “the world’s greatest Rock and Roll band”. In January 2026 they released The Demise of Planet X on Rough Trade, the most open record of their career: guests include Gwendoline Christie, Big Special, Aldous Harding, Sue Tompkins of Life Without Buildings, rapper Snowy and soul singer Liam Bailey. Williamson has described the record as marked by “immense uncertainty” and “mass trauma”. The formula remains recognisable; the range has widened.