It's always been the way: some visionary genius breaks new ground, and the world at large ignores or dismisses it, because what they've produced is strange and does not compute. Then, eventually, the world catches up with them, someone else takes the idea and dilutes it, packages it in a more commercial and presentable form and bingo! they get all the recognition and, moreover, success.
So it is with Pendulum. No, they're not the groundbreakers, although you'd think from the reception and sales they've achieved that they'd invented sliced bread or something. I suppose it's all a matter of exposure and timing. There's a lot of material to draw on in the history of popular music, and they've selected a broad range of sources to forge this new hybrid they're getting all the credit for, even if it was almost inevitable that someone would cross rock with drum 'n' bass sooner or later.
Take the sweeping cinematic opening salvoes, 'Genesis' and 'Salt in the Wounds' with their widescreen panoramic orchestral vistas. The epic musical visions are well realised and quite spectacular - if you're not familiar with the works of J. G. Thirlwell. He was incorporating this sort of thing into his output as Foetus and Steroid Maximus over twenty years ago (and doing it brilliantly, and without the digital technology that exists today).
Skipping over the horrible Euro-synth of 'Watercolour,' which boasts the addition of a drum 'n' bass beat to a budget take on A-ha, it's into 'Set Me Free' which amalgamates disco, Hi-NRG dance and Linkin Park stylings with some fairly unpleasant digitalised vocals, as favoured by The Black Eyed Peas and the majority of char R'n'B acts, a trick repeated on 'Crush.' So much for innovation.
'Under the Waves' (Krautrock collides with Ibiza club tunes) and 'Immunize' (a blatant Prodigy facsimile that even features Liam Howlett) only serve to further illustrate my point. 'The Island' could be any anonymous weedy synth dance-pop act from the last twenty years or so, and 'Comprachicos' and 'The Vulture' are essentially derivative of some of the more driving EBM / Industrial techno coming out of Europe in the late 80s and early 90s. More to the point, they're truly bloody awful, especially the synthesized guitar sounds and the cheesy cartoon pop synth line in the latter. For the metallers they picked up with their Metallica cover, there's 'Self vs Self' featuring In Flames. Thanks. Still, it's better than the Savage Garden meets Mike and the Mechanics meets Level 42 effort that is 'Encoder,' I suppose.
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I should perhaps clarify my position here. I'm not actually criticising because Pendulum have delivered an album that draws on an array of existing forms to create a musical hybrid: that's the nature of postmodern art. It has all been done before (pretty much), and newness can only emerge through assimilation and the creation of hybrids. I am, however, criticising the fact that it's not particularly well executed, and the obviousness of the elements drawn together, and the extremely obvious way in which they've done it. Not so much a case of 'what's cool?' but 'what's been successful? Let's put it all together, make it danceable, then everyone will like it.' Annoyingly, it's worked! Again, I'm not having a pop because they're huge and reached number one here in the UK with 'Immersion.' I am, however, disappointed that the album-buying public are so damn gullible. I'm not being unduly critical because they're an easy target: I'm being critical because it's a terrible record.
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