Submitted By: |Sup|pa|

Genre: MPIII.com Special Sets

Date of Set: Apr 1st, 2006

Filesize: 168.79 MB

Total Downloads: 71

The group is comprised of Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen and Paul Harding. In 2005 they released their debut album, Hold Your Colour. Critically, the album was well-received in both the United Kingdom and Australia. Pendulum have also collaborated with The Freestylers, releasing the single 'Fasten Your Seatbelt'. MC Spyda and Tenor Fly also feature as vocalists on 'Tarantula'. They are currently signed to the Breakbeat Kaos Records label.

Who comprises Pendulum?
Anscenic (Rob), Elhornet (Paul) & Speed (Gaz)

What does each member bring to the group?
It’s a little blurry now because we’ve all learnt stuff off each other…but when we first started out Paul had come from a DJing background, Rob from a production / engineering background, Gaz knew computers & software like the back of his hand, but all of us had written a lot of music.

How did you link?
Rob & Gaz were trying to get tunes ready for a local night when Rob’s hard drive died...so Paul offered to do a set of tunes that we’d backed up onto CD, and Paul gave us a CD of his stuff in return. After getting a chance to listen to it all we decided to form Pendulum…then when ‘Vault’ (our first tune as a trio) was born, we knew something good was going on.

How do you physically work together…Never a case of ‘Too many cooks..’?
Not really, no. We give each other a lot of space to shoot ideas around, which is why it works – none of us come into the studio with the whole, ‘I’m going to write tunes how I want’ attitude. If the creative vibe wears off and tempers start boiling then we just call it a night.

Where did the name ‘Pendulum’ come from?
Haha, some people have asked us whether it has anything to do with the swing bits in ‘Vault’, which would probably be a better answer, but no…it just sounded good at the time.

Who are your musical inspirations?
Most of our inspiration comes from outside of d&b and there’s too much stuff to mention. As far as d&b goes, anything that’s got a new sound to it…mainly from people like Kemal, Hive, Fresh, Sonic & Silver, Diesel / Kaos / Karl K / Jae K, most stuff that’s been on Virus / Ram / BC / Renegade Hardware etc..

How did you get into making music? And has it always been about d&b?
We’ve all been making music for ages, not necessarily d & b. Basically, Paul played drums for a skate punk band…Rob & Gaz used to have a metal group together (Rob on vocals, Gaz on bass). Rob was in a live drum n bass duo…etc.

The drum and bass thing came about because we all had a passion for it, but when DJ’s from the UK or US would come down here we’d hear these absolutely massive tunes that we didn’t have available to us, so we just wrote our own.

You seemed to come out of nowhere but obviously that’s not the case. When and how did your break come?
We owe heaps to a lot of people, but especially Concord Dawn & Doc Scott. Evan from Concord was the one who first started playing ‘Vault’ out (we finished it while he was in town & hanging out with Paul). A while later we signed ‘Spiral’ and ‘Ulterior Motive’ over to their label Low Profile…Doc Scott liked those two and asked for a tune to go on Kings of the Rollerz, so we sent him ‘Vault’. And the rest is history…

Are you surprised by the success of ‘Vault’?
Very much so. What went from a tune we made initially just to drop locally and show people what we’d been up to has now turned into something of an anthem. Completely unexpected.

After such successful debuts do you feel much pressure?
Not really, no. I think we all feel that what we’ve done so far is only a small piece of what we’re capable of. The only pressure at the moment is trying to get tracks finished fast enough…we’re always trying to get them sounding as good as we possibly can, which isn’t always in the interests of labels with schedules to meet.

Your records have come out on several different imprints. Are there any plans to start your own label?
Theres no solid plans in the near future but we’d love to eventually.

Have you a large back-catalogue of tunes ready to release or are you writing all new material?
All new. We have a pretty large back-catalogue as it is but we’re trying to keep everything that comes out under the name Pendulum sounding fresh & new.

What are the pro’s and cons of being Perth-based and do you plan to stay?
Its been said that Perth is the perfect place for artists to test their material, because its large enough to be able to attract a crowd if you’ve got something going on, but still small enough for no one to really care if you make an ass of yourself. There’s only so far you can take things here though, so we’re relocating to London around the end of September.

We’ve heard good things about Perth. Tell us about the d&b scene there.
Hmmm, I like a bit of everything. I rarely listen to Drum and Bass outside of the studio. I like Nofx, Metallica, Afu-ra, the new Janes Addiction album - anything offensive and loud.

What can we expect from Pendulum in the months to come?
At this stage we have 9 main tracks which we’ll introduce over the next few months: ‘Voyager’, ‘Timelapse’, ‘Vertical’, ‘Minds Eye’ (with Bulletproof), ‘Moving Forward’, ‘Masochist’, Pendulum Remix of Concord Dawn’s ‘Tonight’, ‘Become Alive’, ‘Stripped’…as well as some VIPs of certain tracks…

Not available