Their sound was heavy, pummeling and often anthemic, thanks to McGrillen, Swire and third founding member Paul Harding. Dressed in all black and rarely photographed smiling, Pendulum was as much a rock band as an electronic act. Even in the U.
But Pendulum took a backseat when Swire and McGrillen blew up with Knife Party, which achieved headliner status in the States during the dance music boom and placed the group alongside contemporaries like Kill the Noise, Nero, Flux Pavilion, Excision and other genre heavies. Now, after 10 years of making music as Knife Party, the guys have returned to Pendulum. The impetus for the comeback started with that Ultra Show, which led them to create the music that would eventually become "Nothing For Free" and "Driver," both out today Sept.
Before quarantine, the group was testing out the music with sets throughout Australia and New Zealand, and while both currently quarantined at their homes in London, in Pendulum is set to play big deal electronic festivals including We Are FSTVL, Creamfields, Ultra Europe. Here Swire and McGrillen discuss Pendulum's return, why they hated bass music and why albums are no longer necessary. Swire: [We've] definitely got a love-hate relationship with it.
I think the scene had quite a hard time accepting us, especially in the underground. Second of all, one of guys wants to sing and the other guys wants to play a f--king bass. Were there moments you felt accepted in that scene, or was it always a more contentious thing? Swire: Yeah, I think initially it was very accepting, and then we did what we always do and got bored of sticking to the same thing. It seems like with both projects, you've had the same experience of not quite fitting into your respective scene.
McGrillen: I think coming from Pendulum and starting Knife Party, we learned lessons about getting sort of constricted or locked into a genre. Maybe with Knife Party as well, without realizing it we tried not to get locked in. Dubstep was controversial when you debuted Knife Party. People loved it, people hated it and and it created a lot of contention within the scene.
What was your experience of that? Did that make it difficult to be wedged into that scene and play for that fan base, or were you just happy to be there? Swire: We were happy to be there and happy to experiment.
Hold on. Coming out the other end of that project and feeling a bit creatively burnt out and lost, was it always an intention to go back to Pendulum? Swire: The initial kick off was Adam at Ultra. That Ultra show was incredible. What did it do for you in terms of moving you forward? It was a lot of rehearsing.
Swire: Definitely. Too much. Swire: The other thing was, they had this rotating stage at Ultra to cut down on switchover time, so that was the whole plan with Knife Party and Pendulum. We had the whole Pendulum live setup at the back of the stage and the Knife Party DJ set up at the front.
Swire: The first came to life in or '17, around the same time we did Ultra. Swire: It will be two tracks, then two more tracks. After that then we might get back to some Knife Party. McGrillen: Doing it this way gives each individual track more attention, more focus and a better opportunity at being successful, rather than giving them a whole body of work and one gets attention and the rest are buried.
Swire: It also means that instead of one large overarching, and may I say pretentious, concept album, you can come up with mini concepts for each EP, which I kind of like. It was written before happened. It was fairly unnerving to be in a room with 20 people after all that time, but my startledness kind of works in the video. Pendulum at Snowbombing. The next EP coming out after this sounds pretty different to this stuff too. I was actually looking forward to taking a year off at one point, then it happened and I hated it.
You need that so that you can be excited to go and do it. Last time, warming up for Beyonce was just so surreal. It was quite spooky to be playing to that many Beyonce fans. News Music News. Pendulum drop two new songs and tell us about returning after a decade.
By Andrew Trendell. Pendulum, Credit: Press.
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