2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Discography
Showing 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.
6. Website Design
This 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.
