Artist
pendulum
illustrator
Philippines
pendulum is a musician from Philippines. Their discography on Gatefold includes 8 records.
8
Albums tracked
27
In collections
—
Since
Biography
Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen were stuck in Perth playing in a metal band called Xygen before they heard 'Messiah' by Konflict and realized they could make that level of aggression work with a computer. They weren't coming from the pirate radio circuit or the London warehouse scene; they were musicians who treated drum and bass like a rock production. They dragged live instruments into the booth and obsessed over a polished, high-fidelity punch that made the traditionalists at labels like Full Cycle absolutely lose their minds. Hold Your Colour hit the bins and suddenly every DJ in the scene had to decide if they were going to play the 'Voodoo People' remix or pretend they were too cool for it. By the time they signed to Warner for In Silico, they had ditched the breakbeats for 4/4 stomps and literal power chords. It was a calculated move into the stadium circuit that felt like a betrayal to the jungle purists but made total sense for a band that spent their formative years idolizing Metallica and The Prodigy. They eventually burned out on the touring grind and pivoted to Knife Party just to reclaim the club energy, but the original Pendulum run remains the blueprint for how you turn a niche subculture into a mainstage spectacle.
Bio from The Clerk
The Arc of pendulum
The pivots — what forced pendulum to reinvent.
The Breakbeat Kaos Years
Moving from Australia to the UK put them right under the wing of DJ Fresh and Adam F. They spent this era refining the 'Pendulum sound'—that hyper-compressed, high-octane snare and rolling bassline that felt more like a machine gun than a groove. It culminated in Hold Your Colour, an album that combined plastic-sounding synths with liquid funk sensibilities and basically forced the entire drum and bass genre to pick a side.
The Arena Rock Pivot
The shift for In Silico wasn't subtle; Swire started singing lead and they brought in a full-time drummer to transition into a live band. They swapped the complex breakbeats for straight rock rhythms and massive distorted guitar riffs, aiming directly at the Download Festival crowd rather than the Fabric basement. This was the moment they became a pop-adjacent powerhouse, losing the respect of the 'headz' but gaining a massive global audience that didn't care about tempo snobbery.
Influences
- The Prodigy — Rob Swire has cited Liam Howlett as the primary reason he realized dance music could have the energy of a punk show. You hear it in the distorted lead synths and the aggressive, maximalist production style that prioritizes impact over subtlety.
- Konflict — The track 'Messiah' is the specific record Swire credits with changing his life and steering him toward drum and bass. Its cold, tech-step precision provided the foundation for Pendulum’s early work on the 31 Records label.
- Metallica — Before the synths, Swire and McGrillen were metalheads, and they never really lost the desire for the big riff. The song structures on Immersion borrow more from thrash metal dynamics than they do from traditional house or techno.
- Bad Company UK — The group's 'The Nine' was a staple in their early sets and heavily informed the dark, driving bass energy of their debut single 'Vault.' They chased that specific UK tech-step grit before adding their own stadium-sized polish.
- Led Zeppelin — They’ve openly discussed the influence of John Bonham’s drum sound on their approach to recording live kits. They wanted that massive, room-filling acoustic weight to anchor their electronic elements, especially on the later records.
Discography
Their records — most-collected first.
Around the web
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