We won’t be seeing new music from Australian/British drum’n’bass outfit Pendulum any time soon, and when we do, its not going to sound anything like it did in the past. That’s according to band members Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen, who also helm electro house outfit Knife Party.
In a recent Knife Party Reddit AMA, the pair were asked about the progress of the new Pendulum album, something fans have been waiting for since the outfit’s last release, Immersion, in 2010.
To this question the duo gave two answers. With the first, a “keep-management-and-fans-happy answer”, Swire confirmed that not much has happened on that front but they do have a backlog of unreleased material from the last two albums “that we still love and would like to finish”.
They then swiftly contradicted that statement with the following “honest” answer, where Swire admits that, while Pendulum are contracted to do another album, he actually doesn’t “really want to do one.”
“It’s been nearly 5 years since the last Pendulum album – even if we do release new material, it will most likely sound completely different, just because…well, people change, and get bored of things,” he writes. “I have no real desire to make drum’n’bass anymore, I have no desire to fuse it with rock, and I sure as fuck don’t have any desire to tour with a live band.”
In 2012 Pendulum announced an indefinite hiatus while Swire and McGrillen got stuck into work on their new project. “Around about the time we started Knife Party, I really lost my heart for the project,” he admits. He goes on to recount the time Pendulum played Glastonbury right before Beyoncé, and saw “a crowd full of parents and their kids waiting to sing ‘Crazy in Love’, staring at us with blank faces.”
“I was watching the TV coverage of the show afterwards and I just thought, ‘how the fuck did it turn into this?’,” he writes. “‘This isn’t the kind of project I wanted to be involved in at all’. It wasn’t even the crowd response, I just didn’t like anything about it.”
The producer admits the outfit wasn’t profitable due to tour expenses and said while money wasn’t the top concern, “if your heart isn’t in the project, well, there’s not much point in continuing.”
“We’re contracted for another album. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I don’t really want to do one – I’d prefer to work on something else with KP or perhaps a new project altogether. If I have to do it, then I will, but that’s never a great place to start making music.”
While Pendulum as a band have been quiet for the last half-decade, Swire has previously mentioned that a new Pendulum album could be ready by 2015. Band members Paul ‘El Hornet’ Harding and The Verse are still performing as a “Pendulum DJ Set”. When asked how they feel about their former bandmates carrying on and making money from the Pendulum name without them, the pair answered with a cryptic “[redacted]”.
Read the entire AMA here.
Listen: Pendulum – ABC News Theme Remix
https://twitter.com/knifepartyinc/status/544969782894673920
thank you everyone for your AMA questions, sorry we couldn't answer all of them especially pendulum ones because .. ya know
— Knife Party (@knifepartyinc) December 16, 2014
