Pendulum, the incredible drum & bass act, just returned after a 10 year hiatus with two fresh releases yesterday, “Driver” and “Nothing For Free.” Despite the gap in releases, the new music shows that the group hasn’t lost a step and is still cognizant of what the “Pendulum” sound and brand are.
But, it wasn’t an easy journey, as founding members Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen spoke with NME about the tracks and what’s on the horizon.
“‘What the fuck is Pendulum? What does it sound like? How much of a song is too much of a song?’,” Swire mused. “You don’t want to come back full-pop and have everyone like, ‘What the fuck happened?’ It’s just about remembering what your own sound is.”
However, the question on everyone’s mind is: What’s next? The two answer that, as well.
Would you say that these two tracks are representative of other stuff you’ve been working on?
Gareth: “It’s all quite different.”
Rob: “It’s representative of what we’re happy to show to people. There’s a lot of different shit, and some stuff where we thought, ‘If we liked Pendulum, that would be shit’ so we scrapped it. The next EP coming out after this sounds pretty different to this stuff too.”
What’s coming next? Is there an album on the horizon?
Rob: “We’re planning to come up with another EP after this one, then maybe try to come up with some Knife Party music or do an onslaught of tracks. It’s pretty open right now, which is one of the benefits of the pandemic.”
So, unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like we’re getting a full album after these tracks. In fact, it appears we’ll be getting the group’s first EP — they’ve only released singles and albums thus far. The good news is we’ll be getting more music, the bad news is we want more…
Listen to “Driver” & “Nothing For Free” below!
