GIG REVIEW: Pendulum
- Posted on November 29, 2007 2:51 PM
- 0 comments
Band: Pendulum
Venue: Electric Ballroom
Date: 28th November 2007
Review by Ash Akhtar
I enjoy standing in queues. I suspect this makes me quintessentially British, but I enjoy it for its sheer entertainment value. It’s possible to learn a great deal about people and their ideas of patience. This particular queue to the Electric Ballroom is mostly comprised of people with glo sticks and reflective clothing armed with 440ml cans of Heineken and Stella Artois. As we approach the door, some of the booze is thrown away and some is stashed under an adjacent shop’s shutter for post-gig consumption.
Entering the main room, I assume the support have already started as there’s already a pit at the front about 20 deep. Making my way to the bar, I get served surprisingly quickly and make my way back to watch the support act at my preferred spot of stage left. Fuelled by tinnies guzzled in haste at the door and a DJ playing Prodigy and Killing in the name remixes, the youthful crowd are frenzied.
Pendulum take the stage as the DJ fades out Give it away (at this stage, I feel a little like a 90s version of DI Sam Tyler) and open up with Blood Sugar. Great song. But little bass. Which, for a drum n bass show, is ironic. It’s great that Pendulum are using live instrumentation combined with computer technology; yet no fab Fender bass cranked through any amount of Trace Elliott’s is going to compete with thick digital sine waves…
New single Granite heralds a new direction for Pendulum, not only because they left Breakbeat Kaos but by now also incorporating male New Order-esque vocals. I wasn’t a huge fan of it and thought the Dillinja remix should have been what the song should have always sounded like. Perhaps the new commerciality of the vocals has been a stipulation from their new label. Whatever the reason, they’re all over Zane Lowe’s playlist and that’s a good thing. Dipping into their fantastic Hold your Colour album and playing classics like Fasten your Seatbelts and Another Planet sends the audience into further ecstasy.
As the gig came to a close, I felt energised by a nostalgic wave of rave, yet bewildered as to why this generation are picking upon it now. It seems to me that there is little truly new and groundbreaking for them and fusion is the way forward. There were flashes of prog-rock at Pendulum’s gig; some latent thrash intent on bursting out but shackled in by the constraints of playing to a click-track. The kids loved it; their freedom and naked enthusiasm for music was, frankly, inspiring and they deserved a great deal more than what Pendulum had to offer.
Related links:
Buy and sell Pendulum tickets on Seatwave.
Pendulum MySpace.
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