Pendulum Throw In The Towel

It looks as though Perth-born London-bred electronica piece Pendulum have reneged on a statement they made to fans at last year’s V Festival in the UK, explaining that they will be on hiatus. However, we have now learned that the touring, recording force known as Pendulum is no more.

In a recent interview with triple j, Rob Swire, one half of the creative due behind Pendulum which took form a decade ago in Perth, confessed that it stopped being fun. However, fans can let out a sigh of relief, as this isn’t the last we’ve heard of Swire and counterpart Gareth McGrillen, who will bring their side project Knife Party to the front burner.

“The Knife Party thing is going so well we don’t really feel like going back to junior school anytime soon”, Swire told triple j’s Linda Marigliano. “I guess we’d been doing Pendulum for ten years and that’s a pretty long time to be doing anything, I guess. We were still playing tracks like Blood Sugar that we made when we were 18 or 19. To still be doing that 10 years later, it just felt like time to do something else.”

Pendulum, who were known for their live band formation, became more of a chore for the musicians, with Swire continuing to say: “Rock bands are having a pretty hard time at the moment and we weren’t a rock band, but with Pendulum we had the band format. We just decided that in 2012 it was time to put that down for a bit.”

Knife Party has already pricked up a lot of ears; their electro-driven house music with a slight tinge of dubstep has come like a breath of fresh air to the pair: “We’re having too much fun with this project. It’s also great because Pendulum towards the end sort of felt like we were doing it because we had to and that’s never a fun way to do music. Whereas Knife Party is pretty much solely us doing what we want to, and if no one likes it we don’t care.”

So, we have been presented with a double edged sword. Swire has confirmed there will be no new Pendulum dates in the foreseeable future and no album on the horizon, but instead we get something new, something fresh to get obsessed with all over again!

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