About Pendulum

Francesca Emmingham

About Pendulum

• Pendulum is a drum and bass group first formed in Perth, Australia in 2002 with the members Rob Swire, Gareth McGrillen and Paul Harding. This is an extract from their own online biography featured on their website:

“Pendulum‟s mission has always been to pull together their production resources, ideas and influences from various styles of music, to create a new sound that they felt was missing from dance music. The individual members behind Pendulum have been active in Perth‟s live music scene for several years: producer / vocalist / keyboardist Rob Swire and producer / bassist Gareth McGrillen played together in the acclaimed Perth band Xygen, while Paul „El Hornet‟ Harding had been a veteran of the Perth DJ scene.”

• 2005 saw pendulum release their debut album and since then they have become a mainstream band featuring on many tracks and playing at festivals all over the world including the UK and Ibiza. They have even been featured on America’s Billboard lately as they try to break America.

Live Shows

Although Pendulum decided to split

in 2012 they still tour in the form of

DJ sets and still sell out by doing

this. They are seen here playing the

worlds best venues and festivals

leading up to their split which

showed the spin off band formed by

Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen of

the band hit the big time selling out

shows throughout the UK and the

rest of the world supporting other

bands and are predicted to headline

their own tour soon.

Knife Party As we saw Pendulum come to an end Knife

Party a new sound formed by two members

of the band hit the big time and slowly grew in

popularity throughout the UK and many other

parts of Europe. Although they haven’t been

seen to headline their own tour yet we are

predicting that there will be a high demand for

this as their success grows. They have been

seen to play various festivals including the

UK’s biggest summer festival: Reading and

Leeds. The Dance Stage was backed up

outside the tent as fans swarmed to see the

band live. Their electro house sound is

different to Pendulum but the members are

determined to keep some elements similar

but decided before Knife Party was formed

that the sound was too different to be

released by Pendulum themselves.

DiscographyShowing Pendulums latest singles we can see an

intertextual tie between all of them in the way of a

supernatural element being shown. We can also see that

some of them are very similar in design and Pendulum will

have done this to create an identity for themselves as the

fans will recognise this as the band even if they see the disc

sat on a shelf.

The singles/albums with the most graphic

individual designs are the ones the band

are most confident will succeed and show

the same characteristics even if it’s not as

obvious. They show the same genre

conventions of their style of music with

heavy colours and originality in the grafic

design. None of the images featured are of

a real nature and are all showing

surrealism which is similar to the sound

that they are wanting to produce and the

sound they are expected to feature on their

singles and new releases in order to please

their fans.

This design is frequently featured throughout the discography

ranging from years ago to last year before the band announced

their split showing they successfully carved their own identity

through intertextuality in favour of Andrew Goodwin.

Website DesignThis advertisement shows to be the main

feature of Pendulums website making people

aware of their release and digital package that

is available for their fans. This is intertextual as

fans can purchase all things related to their

new single and also shows product placement

as they have made this available through

iTunes so could increase the popularity of

Apple or people who like iTunes could be more

likely to want to purchase it.

They feature a ‘pop-up player’ on the top right hand corner of their

website which influences fans and their website visitors to listen to

their new song while they explore the site and look for what they

want. This also makes them more likely to go and buy their digital

package or buy tickets to their DJ sets if they enjoy the song while

they are on the website looking at other things which in all boosts

the songs popularity and gets the band more money and recognition.

The constant use of the same font to frame

the bands name is intertextual with their

brand as a team, this being constant makes

it recognisable and would even be seen as

this if it was used for anything but the bands

name which reaches out to their audience

and maintains a sense of consistency and

identity for the members and their fans.