I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, of the personal variety. Makes a difference from stressing over things that I can’t fix at work I suppose, but this is the kind of stuff that means I don’t eat or sleep so well, which is a bit of a fucking pain when you’ve got to get up at half five every morning and slog 100 miles up the M4 into work.

I’ve just been sitting here tidying up bits and pieces with iTunes on shuffle, when Look for the Woman by Dan le Sac & Scroobius Pip came on. I’m a big fan, absolutely love the album, and think that Pip is a lyrical genius. Then these verses hit me, and it was almost like he was talking directly to me …

I guess lately I’ve had too much time to think and, yeah, way
too much to drink and when the paper meets the ink over
thinking is the chink in my armour. But that’s just what I do.

And I’ve always been that way forever questioning each
day and every play that’s made that may mean when I lay
my busy mind will make me pay by finding problems and
reasons that might not even be true

You can listen to the whole track here (ignore the crappy slideshow over the top of it)

But I’m listening, and thinking … crap that’s me all over! Just this week I dug a hole for myself through no other reason than over thinking a situation that apparently didn’t even exist in the first place … it’s kinda nice to have it verbalized in a song though

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

According to Wikipedia, Mansun were an indie band that formed in 1995 that “liberally [mixed] beatrock, prog, psychedelia, pop, and 80s noir influences—along with having a fearsome live act who drastically rearranged their songs for the stage”.

I think that Paul Draper (vocalist, rhythm guitarist) would take exception to that. It wasn’t indie, it was rock and roll.
It is the 10th anniversary of the band’s album Six, and Paul has written an extensive, revealing and (at times) downright bizarre two-part blog about the album, it’s meanings, inspirations, the trials and tribulations of putting it together, and everything in between.

To me, Mansun were – and still are – much more than just a band that did some off-the-wall shit and tried to challenge preconceptions and genres, getting critically slaughtered whilst doing it.

Mansun were the first band I ever saw live, during their Six tour back in late 1998. I would have been almost 14 then, living in Mid-Cheshire and just finding my way through the social minefield that was High School, being a teenager, and all that other crap we all have to go through before we find an even keel to guide us through this crazy world. I can still remember queueing up outside the Chester Leisure Centre (it was a big place!) at night with my friends, sheltered from the winter weather by ridiculous black puffa jackets. Yeah, we sure were cool back then.

It seemed like an age before the band came on stage, and we were so short we could barely see anything anyway. Along with the ridiculous jackets (which were so hot we risked passing out from heat exhaustion), it all got considerably uncomfortable. We left the crowd and ended up walking around the upper floors of the Centre, whilst Mansun’s sound perforated every wall and surface, echoing down corridors so that wherever we went, it would find us.
We went back in at the end, standing near the side with the people in wheelchairs, in time for their final song. I can’t even remember what it was, but to this day I still remember the experience, so it must’ve meant something to me.

The album Six, however, meant and means a whole lot more. Mainly because I can listen to it without standing behind unfeasably tall men whilst my internal organs boil out of my ears perhaps. 2008 is, as I’ve already said, the 10th anniversary of an album which is as musically complex and fascinating as anything else I’ve known. And I’m going to talk more about it. Click ‘More’ if you’re bored, and maybe want to get an inner glimpse at my internal locus.So, here you are. Well done.

Reading the blogs that Paul has written will give you a much better understanding of Six and perhaps the band as a whole, but I don’t know that it will make a whole lot of sense unless you’re familiar with the album beforehand.
If just this much has gotten you curious, hit up these links where you can hear tracks legally. Or just buy the album, it’s probably only a couple of quid by now. (Hmm, the second link currently has demos that are referred to in the blogs, but the videos down the left have the album tracks)
Most people I mention Mansun to have never heard of them, or assume that I’m talking about Marilyn Manson. Nobody has yet assumed I’m going on about Charlie Manson, thank god.

Musically, Mansun are incredibly interesting to listen to. Reading the blogs, it becomes clear just what insane lengths they went to in order to create the sound they did. The accepted standard of song structures was tossed out of the window, along with most other accepted conventions at the time, in order to make something that was specifically different and, I guess, a “fuck you” to the music scene of the day. They were, of course, widely slated by critics of the time, when everybody and everything had to be pigeonholed into one genre or the other, or else people just wouldn’t “get it”.

Now, I think, the album is critically acclaimed. Funny how things change, isn’t it?

Whilst the music, especially the crazy, wailing guitars, were impressive to me (strange how my current love of good electronic music is partly to do with the insane production and layering of sounds that goes on, which is exactly the sort of thing that Mansun implemented in their music), the lyrics meant so much more.

The overwhelming feeling of Six – to me at least – is of quite a chaotic, dark, tortured mind. It turns out, reading the blogs, that in a lot of cases, Paul and the band were plainly taking the piss

As a kid, I was a bit … misplaced. I moved from my childhood friends and relationships in South Wales to the North West, just in time for High School. Using my tried-and-tested combination of affability (is that a word?), gentle self depracation and a knack for avoiding anything that would seriously embarrass myself (for example, anything sport-related) I got in with a fairly close-knit group of friends and things were alright.
But it was a big, scary world, and I had my own demons to deal with. Maybe I didn’t even know it at the time, but once I found Mansun and Six, I started feeling like I had something with which I could associate with my innermost thoughts.

Even if that something was just a Compact Disc.

The family moved again, a year or two later, back to where we came from. A blessing and a curse, because although I knew far more people, they had all changed – hell, I had changed. Again, the intricate, dark lyrics of Six came back into play. I remember having bad days, getting on the bus home and plugging that into my ears, and just feeling somehow better by the time I got home.

To me, Six was very much about being different, being an outcast, not truly belonging to one place or another, even if that was all inside and nobody really knew about it. To this day, if I really strip myself down to the basics, that’s how I feel.
It makes life one helluva lot easier to be affable and nice to everyone, and it feels good. But by not going to one extreme or another in anything that you do, you end up not really belonging to anything or anyone. I still dress like people I’d be out of my depth with to socialise with people I love to be with but will never fit into the ‘culture’ that they are a part of.
It’s something that I’ve done for so long that I wonder if I’ll ever be able to change, or if I want to. It’s all a bit strange, really.

But I digress.

Back in the Young Ed days, I took the words of the songs as literally as I could. I’ve never been a great philosopher and, as such, all the Taoist, religious stuff threaded in and out of songs was a bit beyond me. So I took what I could understand and tried to make it relevant to my life.

The second track on the album, Negative, has such nuggets as

Stop, you’re looking miserable / Can’t be bothered getting up today / My future’s looking positive / No one even picked on me today

Turns out this song is all about getting a mortgage application approved, and is actually a really positive song!! But as I say, at the time it was all about what it meant to me. There were some people who made my life needlessly negative for their own personal enjoyment, and this song worked well with it.

Inverse Midas is a wonderful track. Very short, with just a simple message:

Everybody helps me make my own mistakes
If i’m left alone i’d make them anyway

It was a song intended to outline how we all blame outside influences for our mistakes to make ourselves feel better but, if we look at it objectively, it’s all on us. As relevant today as it ever was, if you ask me. I think that plenty of us are guilty of making ourselves feel good by blaming other people needlessly. There was a lot in my life I had control over and never exercised that control to make things better. It’s a personal failing of mine, one which continues to this day.

Anti Everything is a song about homeless people. Specifically, the grief that Paul Draper got off a homeless person in London. I like the song, and thankfully its words mean nothing to me. But the title always struck a chord with me, despite my considerably conformist attitud to life, the universe and everything.
I guess we all have a little anarchist in us just waiting to come out

Cancer, a 9min32sec collosus of a song, struck a chord on a few levels. For a start it contains the repeated lyric

I’m emotionally raped by Jesus

This, as a member of a catholic school whilst not entirely agreeing with catholicism (nor any sort of organised religion) provided me with great entertainment. I think I always fancied that one day I’d whack this track on in the middle of Religious Education. I’d probably have been burnt as a heretic, but the little anarchist in me obviously isn’t too fond of fire so it never happened.

I’m emotional and sensitive and frail
In need of some love

Yeah, you can laugh. But everyone needs love, and that includes me. I’m still emotional and sensitive. I’ll break your teeth if you try and test out the frail bit though. Be warned.

Special/Blown It (Delete as Appropriate) is a brilliant song, musically speaking. Lyrically this might be the one that I identified with most, depending on where my mood was swinging on the crazy pendulum of life.
The track is quite personal to Paul Draper, envisaging himself in the future after Six, what he may have become, depending on how things all go.
For me – at times feeling like I was stuck on a tireless treadmill going nowhere, achieving nothing, feeling like I would never achieve anything worthwhile, the words were like a warm blanket to cling to. Sounds perverse, but when you can’t vocalise your thoughts and feelings that are nagging at the back of your skull, having a song do it all for you is quite comforting.
Sometimes the urge to just turn away from it all, forsake everyone and everything and disappear to another life was tempting. I never had the balls to do it though.

It’s still a song that came to my head whenever I failed at something where others succeeded. I beat myself up pretty badly over stuff, perhaps sometimes to the point of obsession. I’m not so bad at that now, probably because I don’t fail much anymore

You should really listen to this, but fuck it, here’s the lyrics all anyway.

I’ve blown it in every single way
Screwed every single chance that came
You’re a super star in waiting for the silver screen
Then the pressure came
Swept away in a tidal wave
Could be all of you, still awake at noon
Blew my chances in a tragic flurry, sweeping apathy
Buy all my food from the B.P. store when the night kicks in
I’m turning my back on everyone
I’ve blown everything i’ve ever done

I’ve fucked it up, shot my load
Spewed onto the motorway shoulder
I could have been somebody special

I’m not such a tragic waste of space
I could bring happiness to people
Just one more greatest hits tour for the devotees
The same old faces came
They love their summer spectaculars
By the grace of god could be up by noon
And not a tragic waster but i can’t stay focused for my apathy
They could have bought me a brand new car and a house in france
I’ve really blown it now
Blew it all away on a whim

Sat on my own for far too long
Things could have been so different now
Life looks so confusing through my window bay
Just to see a face, i’m really pleased when the gas man comes
Could be all of you still awake at noon
Blew my chances in a tragic flurry of apathy
All my food from a B.P. store when the night kicks in
I’ve really blown it now
Blew it all away on a whim

But i fucked it up, shot my load
Spewed onto the motorway shoulder
I could have been somebody special

Legacy was and is an amazing track. The vocals are just so hauntingly beautiful. Got to hand it to Paul, he has a fantastic voice. I think this one has had a specific relevance throughout life, maybe still now. I think Paul explains it best, as it’s also how I see the song:

… looking back at the sacrifice of your emotional happiness for material gain has had on your life and where it’s got you. Trying to justify to yourself it’s been the right path to take in your life by lessening the importance of relationships and justifying it by looking at the damage personal relationships can do in your life.
The second half of the second verse asks what’s the root of ambition, what character defect drives you? The line: “I wouldn’t care if I was washed up tomorrow” is false bravado, a self-defence mechanism to hide the fear of failure from your ambition. It’s just raising some questions about ambition and the futility of it because in the end. The price. The cost. What’s left at the end of the day when ambition’s drained the last drop out of you? Well I just pictured the view from the stage during a gig. The sea of faces looking back at you, that’s what your doing it all for, just them people, and at the end of the day, after you’ve given everything, well nobody really cares when you’re gone, do they?

Talking to someone the other night, I realised that material gain is all I’m gunning for in life right now. It’s short term happiness, the absolute worst kind you can get. When I look back at my life, am I going to regret all of that? I’m fairly determined that’s not going to happen. Changes are afoot, or nearly are anyway. I don’t want my Legacy to be devoid of meaning, with nobody caring when I’m gone.

The last song on the album, Being a Girl is not, as some short-sighted morons might think, about wanting a sex change. It’s an allegory for being unhappy with your situation. As you’ve probably guessed by now, this was yet another poignant track.

Lyrics like

I’m so boring, my clothes wanna keep
Someone else warm, someone cooler

and

My deodorant hides the real me
These things elevate me above animals

occasionally come back to nag at me. It’s the age old questions we all face – who am I? Why am I? What am I doing with my life? What makes me special?
You can kind of see why Sylar got all crazy and homicidal once he started getting powers. Yay for Heroes reference.

Christ on a cracker, this has gone on a long while. I think I’ve been writing/listening for about an hour. I need to get out more. Oh wait, it’s dark and Monday. Whatever.

I specifically didn’t mention the title track and first track of the album, Six. Mainly because this contains the most currently topical (in reference to me) lyrics of them all, and partly because it makes me look mildly clever by linking the end of the post into the post title.

And you see, i kind of shivered to conformity
Did you see the way I cowered to authority
You see, my life, it’s a series of compromises anyway
It’s a sham, and i’m conditioned to accept it all

I don’t like making compromises. I want the best that I can get, at all times. I don’t think that that’s a bad way to be. It’s a miracle that we’re all here on this planet – regardless of what religion you do or do not believe in – and it’s my personal belief that we owe it to whatever power that got us here to be the best that we can be in at least one way in our lives.

I also use that as a reason not to do things. I work one side of the country, live the other. Either I stay here, take a different job that won’t pay as well and try and get a life, or I go live over there, get paid just as well but live somewhere not so nice.

The payoff of either is that I finally get a life back, meet new people and finally strike up a relationship again with some attractive young lady.

The other night I got some good advice. It wasn’t ground-breaking stuff, in fact it was exactly what I’ve been telling myself for a long time. I think I just needed to hear it from somebody else, someone who realistically doesn’t have any kind of vested interest in whatever I choose to do – or not do.

So yeah. Life is a series of compromises. Sometimes you just have to, in order to make yourself better than if you’d stuck to your principles and not bothered.

Mansun’s Six is a triumph of musical and lyrical talent.

And I was all Intel, Emo-Inside as a teenager, without having to wear ANY fucking mascara or faux-goth clothing to get attention and feel special.

Who knew?

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.

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.