There’s a track on ‘The Other Side’ single from Pendulum. It’s a live version of Showdown without their MC verbally crapping all over it, and has an awesome intro that builds into the main song.

I really wish they’d release it as a properly mastered single without the crowd noise over it.

That’s about all, really

I think I linked to this on a previous iteration of a blog.

Moby -- Disco Lies

Great song, great video.
You’ll never look at a KFC in the same way again

Most garden-variety electro/dance tracks don’t really require much sophistication to get into the charts and onto dancefloors across the world, and a lot of the time it shows – Basshunter’s efforts, for example, are truly shocking (in my humble opinion) yet have done pretty well for themselves.
Occasionally though, you get a song that’s relatively simple, but just works. Baditude by Spoon, Harris and Obernik is a prime example. Funky, catchy beat, uncomplicated lyrics (with a couple of continental ones thrown in for good measure), and a brilliant vocalist all makes for a brilliant track that you can’t help but a) dance to, b) sing along to and c) purchase and play a LOT.

It also goes REALLY well into Overseer’s Velocity Shift, as Rob and I found out when putting together the mix for HanClareFest ‘08.

Also, I don’t know if anybody noticed, but the whole site was down for quite a while. Expired domain names and mix-ups with settings are to blame. As am I.

But we’re back now, and Rob has some great self-produced tracks going for download on his page.

I finally got hold of the Special Edition of Pendulum’s In Silico on Thursday, and since then I’ve been listening to it pretty much constantly whenever I’m in the car (i.e. 3 to 4 hours a day) so it’s got a fair bit of play time!

I’m not a music reviewer by any means. I’m not a musician, I’m not familiar with many techniques used to create this sort of music so I can’t really talk about it. But these are my thoughts and feelings on the album. You may agree, you may disagree, you may not give a flying fuck at a rolling doughnut. It probably helps if you have a copy of the album to listen to … otherwise some of it won’t make any sort of sense.

Either way, here’s some pictures of the Special Edition stuff (because I’m a wee bit sad), and the review follows after the link. Click ‘em if you want ‘em bigger.

1: Showdown

The album opens with this 5:27 track. The tiniest of noises (still very Pendulum) then one of Rob Swire’s vocal pieces with which you become well accustomed to by the end of the album. Showdown is a hugely energetic piece, with a nice solid drum and bass foundation, addictive guitar riffs, all laced with Pendulum’s electronic mastery. At first, I didn’t like this track. I thought it was too long and samey. But after a few listens, I’ve totally changed my mind. It’s a piece that you cannot help but crank up all the way, dance around and – if you’re so inclined – do yourself an injury on the air guitar I can’t help but think that Showdown is an absolute blast to perform, and I reckon it’ll be a huge hit on Pendulum’s live set. More on that later, actually. The only real criticism I have of this track is that it ends abruptly and disappointingly. After an action-packed, mental five minutes and twenty four seconds, it just suddenly … stops, with a crash of cymbal and then you’re into track two …

2: Different

Opening with some distressed guitar and Pendulum’s ever-present drum/snare combo, we’re treated to Rob Swire, this time more melodically than the last outing. I really like this track – there’s more vocal; more of a ’structure’ to it as you’d maybe expect from a “song”. It’s also relatively slow, which gives it a different feeling to typical Pendulum tracks.

At 1:10 the ‘Pendulum’ kicks in, with a really nice sound, heavy drums and nice chunky bass underlying it. The track dips in and out of a slightly haunting, wailing guitar, as Swire’s proves that his vocal talents mix just as well with heavier stuff as they do with the slightly lighter edge. Four minutes in, things take a turn with an almost acoustical break, mixing well with some nice electronic sounds before a minute later, the bass kicks back up a notch and you can feel the song building to its finale. Somewhat unfortunately, that crescendo is shortlived, as the song ends on a brief vocal fade-out. It somehow fits the track though. So onto a more well-known track 3 …

3: Propane Nightmares

I liked this track very very quickly when I first heard it online. It has a very ‘normal’ song structure with a vocal thread throughout. The addition of brass instruments to drum, bass and electronics is a touch I absolutely love, and it works well on this track. They’ve hit it right with the mix between vocal styles (i.e. singing, vocodering, backing) and the whole track has a consistent musical thread (I know, I’ve said thread twice) which makes it easy to get on with. The ‘orchestral’ section three-quarters of the way in is a nice addition which works surprisingly well. When this track builds to a crescendo, it shows Track 2 how it should be done. What it leads into is entirely different …

4: Visions

I don’t get this track. However, I found myself humming it today, so it’s obviously got something to get stuck around in my head. It’s a vocoder-fest, basically. Now I like vocoders, I think they’re cool. Sometimes though, you can have too much of a cool thing. The music is pretty good, with a snare-less drum beat (thankfully, you can definitely have too much of that snare). It’s very “electronic” with some really nice guitar solos dropped in for good measure that work really well.

Overall, the whole thing is quite toned-down though. There’s also a sound I love, starts looping at … 1:37 if anyone can tell me what that is. The real gem in this track though, is the entirely unexpected breakout of sound from 2:05 to 2:19. It’s a burst of electro-wonderfulness that is happy and vibrant and magical, springing out of nowhere. As suddenly as it begins, it ends, but wait until 4:10 when it comes back at you, this time with more-understandable vocals from Rob Swire, and builds into what I think this track should have been built around. But again, it ends all-too-soon, and we’re back in vocoderville with words nobody can understand. And then it stops. Like Showdown, it seems they built up this song and then decided they didn’t know how to bring it to a suitable close. So they didn’t.

5: Midnight Runner

No question in my mind, one of the standout tracks on this album. The intro has a distinctive Pendulum vibe to it in my mind. Unfortunately the snare is back in action, but the sound starts to build up in nice layers almost immediately. It’s reminiscent of Still Grey from Hold Your Colour, one of my favourite tracks on that album.

At 2:15, the pace changes, getting faster and faster until there’s some nice chunky sound, melding into wailing synths. I can’t really say much about why I like this whole track (and especially this bit) because I don’t know enough about how these guys do what they do. Sounds damn good though.

Another change comes around the four minute mark when they change the feel of the whole thing … again with a sound that I absolutely love but have no idea what it is or how it’s achieved. Again, if someone could point this out, I’d appreciate it The ubiquitous Pendulum drumbeat kicks back in to complement this weird sound and a backing vocal, the whole track taking on an even quicker tempo. It all comes to an end, this time leaving about 30 seconds of weird, screeching sound that is both creepy and cool. It’s kinda weird but good, which really describes this whole track.

6: The Other Side

After hearing the excerpt of this on the Mini Mix, I couldn’t wait to hear this track. To say I was disappointed is … probably about right. It is not what I expected, and I still can’t decide if I fully like it or not. The intro is moody and pensive, before building into drums and bass after a minute, then storming guitar twenty seconds later, graced with Swire’s vocals. If Pendulum wanted to mix Drum & Bass with rock, this is how you do it. What comes next is … confusing. I don’t know what song the lyrics are from (if anything) but it just doesn’t seem to fit, either the song or Pendulum as a whole. There’s more vocodering from Swire in the middle just to add confusion, then back to the rocking guitar …. and back into weirdness again.

I just don’t get this track, what it’s supposed to be, or anything. It’s a shame, because the ‘Come on down to the other side/come with us to the gates of hell’ bit is brilliant I think, the rest just lets it down. There’s also another rather sudden ending to this track as well, though not as extreme as before.

7: Mutiny

In through the maze of your reflection, we enter from a terminal connection.

The Terminal was an epic track from Hold Your Colour, with a truly menacing feeling written all over it, the lyrics above growled out of some evil electronic beast. Those lyrics have been re-used in Mutiny, a track that I can only think was named after the senses of Pendulum mutinied and leapt overboard during the creation of this track.

Rob describes this as a “gang show rendition of Slam” (perhaps he meant The Terminal … he’s taken the whole thing down now anyway) and I think that’s pretty close to the mark. The whole thing just feels odd, and a bit of a mess really in comparison to what we’re used to from the boys from Perth. I get the feeling that, had The Terminal never been made, this wouldn’t be so bad. But there’s no getting away from comparing the two, and this falls down against the other each time. It’s the only track I’ve actually skipped so far on listening to the album, and my feelings for it haven’t really changed. It redeems itself from the middle onwards, but the start is just too odd for me. Ironically, this is a track that takes forever to bring itself to a close

8: 9,000 Miles

Another one of the standout tracks, this one has echoes of Girl in the Fire from Hold Your Colour in the guitar work, with a nice bassline that complements but doesn’t overpower. Added synths halfway in combine together to create a chilled, laid-back sound that is a welcome break after the noise of Mutiny. There’s not much more to 9,000 Miles than that really, it’s simply well put together. Compared to Girl in the Fire it certainly is lacking a certain something, but it’s hard to pinpoint what and where that something should have been. At six and a half minutes it’s one of the longer tracks and, in fact, one of the more repetitive. But the whole thing just seems to work.

9: Granite

The first track released from In Silico, Granite is the most well-known track. Big, thumping bass, a sharp guitar riff or two and that all-invasive Pendulum drum loop, plus some interesting alien-invasion-stylee lyrics from Rob Swire all combine to create a multi-layered single that is proper Pendulum, whilst being different to what they pulled out with Hold Your Colour. It’s the track that set the marker for what we all expected In Silico to be, yet stands alone as something very individual compared to everything else on the disc.

10: The Tempest

Possibly my favourite of the lot. The start is very acoustic, some may say slightly folky, and very much not what you’d really expect. There’s even a trickling stream in the background, it’s that chilled. Rob Swire is at his melodic best as drums introduce what is about to come next. The lyrics work in tandem with the buildup to the ‘meat’ of the song (“You should have known the storm was coming”) as gradually drums and a slightly growling bass come together just before a killer guitar riff takes center stage and changes The Tempest into an altogether different beast.

This is what The Other Side should have been. In terms of creating a sound that is more vocal, more rocky, yet keeping the electronic/drum and bass aspect that we’re all so familiar with, this track is the way to do it. It sounds like the Pendulum of old whilst being new, fresh and exciting. It draws to an almost-close five minutes in, which would be enough. What follows for the next two minutes is a magnificent symphony of synthetic noise, bass and electric guitar. Each time I hear it, I can’t help turning the volume up just one more notch, until my ears start to bleed. I can’t put my finger on why it’s so good. Maybe because it’s the perfect climax to the final track (ignoring the remixed bonus tracks on the Special Edition disc). Maybe it’s because it feels like Pendulum at their brilliant best. Maybe I’m just weird.

Bonuses

The two bonus tracks are the VIP Mix (by Paul Harding) and the Celldweller Remix. I won’t go into too much detail, however I will say that the VIP Mix turns Propane Nightmares into something much more in line with what we could have reasonably expected from a followup song to the Hold Your Colour tracks. I think I prefer it to the standard mix. The Celldweller mix is great – if you know Celldweller, then you know about the gravelly, smash-you-over-the-head style that he likes to use. Think Propane Nightmares but pissed off and looking for a fight, and you’re pretty much there. It is a very good remix.

Summary

Pendulum: In Silico is a very good album, make no mistake about that. Each song has its own identity, it’s own style, and the quality of each track is excellent. It is no Hold Your Colour; I don’t think you could even call it a successor to that album. Both are entirely different animals in many ways.

Personally, I think that HYC is the superior album – it’s no coincidence that I’ve heard snippets of tracks on In Silico and thought “Oooh, that sounds like Track X from HYC … if only they’d expanded on that”. I didn’t particularly want another Hold Your Colour, but after several plays of In Silico, that is the one I prefer.

It might be totally wrong, but I reckon that Paul Harding (aka ‘El Hornet’), the DJ of the group, had a bigger influence over their first album than he did over this. Back then, Pendulum was Paul Harding, Rob Swire, and Gareth McGrillen. Now it’s grown, and is just Pendulum, with a permanent guitarist and drummer. All this combined, along with a strong feeling I get from In Silico, makes me think that this album was crafted with live performances in mind. There are tracks that would be simply incredible performed live (Showdown, The Tempest) and others that have good bits that could be expanded on and not-so-good bits that could be shortened there and then on-stage (Visions, The Other Side). That drum/snare loop is all pervasive as well, which you do start to notice, and then it starts to get annoying. I can’t help but feel some of the drums could be more expansive, and maybe have been kept simpler for an easier live performance.

That’s the title of the email I received today. Annoying. Apparently due to manufacturing issues, the Special Edition is now delayed until the end of the week.

So I’m downloading a hooky copy of the standard version to listen to until it arrives

I was chatting to one of my bosses the other day and found out that he knows a fair few people in the music scene. The guy from Roots Manuva for one, and Lincoln Barrett aka High Contrast.

Now I’ll be honest, I’d never heard of High Contrast, but it seems this guy is pretty big in the Drum’n'Bass scene and has remixed some top-line artists’ work, as well has having three albums of his own and a big following.

I figured I’d check it out, and sure enough, the music is really good. It’s Drum’n'Bass, electronica, chill-out … a really great mix of styles which has had me going back to the MySpace page several times this evening and will probably have me buying up his latest album (if not all three) in short order.

Clicky the link above, or try it here to take a listen.

Muxtape is a pretty cool website, it basically allows you to upload your own tracks and create a modern-day mix tape. There’s not much more to say than that really.

I’ve created one, electronically flavoured, which you can find here. Give it a click, give it a listen, then go to that site, make your own, and drop a link in the comments section

Clare mentioned something in a reply to a previous post that really got me annoyed. Not at her, but at the vast number of what I like to piously call ‘Musical Idiots’.

Pendulum, a Drum’n'Bass/Electronica/Rock (I guess) band are performing at Glade as well as a whole host of other festivals this summer. Glade is pretty much billed as an Electronic dance music festival first and foremost, so I’d say that Pendulum is a pretty good fit, especially given the sneak peak of their new album ‘In Silico‘.

Apparently, some people are saying that Pendulum is ‘too commercial’ for Glade.
Let’s just examine that in more detail. First, a little history.

Pendulum started out as producers, before hitting the scene with ‘Hold Your Colour‘, an album that was critically acclaimed and did what a lot of bands try and fail to do – bring a totally new, interesting take on a standard music genre or – in this case – fuse some together and create a sound that can only really be described by using the band’s name. Think of Prodigy, who have hits spanning so many genre variations that you can’t possibly pigeonhole them other than under the broad ‘Electronic’ umbrella.

The album, deservedly, did very well. They are now about to release their second album ‘In Silico‘ and, by the sound of what I’ve heard, they are again trying to morph genres – taking what they made with ‘Hold Your Colour’ and bringing in a more rocky element, this time a bit heavier on the home-grown vocals. I was dubious at first, but I now can’t wait for the release.

Now, about Pendulum being ‘too commercial’.

Well, as far as I can see, they took a bit of a risk and a gamble with their first album. They took all the good elements of drum’n'bass and gave it their own injection of their vision of what music should be. It was a huge success.

They’ve now taken that sound and again thrown a whole bunch of new ideas at it, citing influences from all over the musical spectrum.

Nowhere along these lines did they ever ’sell out’; i.e. start creating a more mainstream sound for general consumption, start neutering the music to be more ‘poppy’ or anything like that.

So what are these people trying to say? Pendulum are too commercial … what, successful? Oh christ, cancel the bookings now. God forbid that we should promote a successful band that produces good music. If you ask me, what these people want is a festival that only showcases the little guy. The weird and wonderful music that a handful of people like but is a bit too off-the-wall for a larger scale audience.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone has got to start somewhere, and experimentation with sound is one of the things that I love the most about electronic music.

But why the fuck should we penalise those bands or individuals that DID make it big? Their music is JUST as individual and innovative as the guy playing to twenty people in the corner with a name that has the letter Q in it seven times. So what if they’ve had the money and opportunity to polish it and refine it in a studio? All that means is people enjoy it and, in the case of Pendulum, a LOT of people enjoy it.

Yeah, we all know that huge corporations can be a little evil, but if a band is good enough, the labels will never TRY to mess with the music, because it’s good enough already. And if a label DOES have to mess with the music … maybe they were never that good in the first place. Saying that a band shouldn’t be included for being good enough is ridiculous, frankly.

This is the thing that bothers me about music. A lot of people take it far too seriously. Instead of just enjoying it for what it is, they start catagorising individuals and bands into moronic groups so that they can pretend to be part of some sad little society that nobody really cares about.

Here’s an imaginary conversation.

“Oh, I only listen to independant music.”
“So as soon as your favourite band gets signed up and goes on tour, you won’t listen to them again?”
“That’ll never happen, they’ve got too much integrity.”

*Six months goes by*

“I can’t believe they sold out. What a bunch of losers.”
“Sold out? You mean … signed up to bring their music to the masses, introduce a new sound to the world and make a living? Got the opportunity to expand their sound and explore new avenues? God forbid.”
“But they’re part of the corporate machine! THEY SOLD THEIR SOULS! Plus now normal people like them too, I can’t possibly continue my support!”
“You’re just a bit of a wanker really, aren’t you? Get a job for fuck’s sake.”

Like I said. Makes me annoyed.

BT, or Brian Transeau*, is an Electronic Music artist/producer/DJ/wizard from America. He made his major breakthrough in the UK, effectively giving life to what is known as Trance (hence one of his many nicknames as ‘Father of Trance’).

I’m not going to wax all lyrical about him, because I’ve done that before. Trust me when I say, this guy is brilliant.

I like electronic music because sounds are created that are otherworldly. I love that nothing in this world can produce the sorts of sounds that are made by artists such as BT and their plethora of interesting technology. Songs that are composed entirely on a computer have the ability to send a shiver up and back down my spine, which I think is amazing.

As I’m currently discovering, one of the best ways of really getting in touch with the brilliance of an artist like BT is to listen to the instrumental versions of tracks. The treatment that he gives to the vocals is always interesting, but with them stripped away, you start to pick out nuances of tracks that you’d never even noticed before.

Thanks to a site called MusicFreedom, you can do exactly that. If you like BT or are remotely interested, click here to access those instrumentals, plus a whole load more. You can even buy downloads of the tracks if you like them.

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*NOT British Telecom thankyouverymuch