Pendulum - Showdown [Single]

Warner Music

January 12, 2009, 09:20 PM

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I never seem to be able to get the hang of the various sub-genres of electronic music. There seems to be one for every conceivable eventuality. House, hard house, grime, minimal, electro, happy hardcore, drum and bass, fidget (yes, fidget), breakbeat, big beat, techno and pretty much every combination of those words imaginable. It honestly wouldn't surprise me to find that there's a sub-genre called "happy fidget grime techno electro house beat". The result of this is that I never know what to call artists such as Pendulum. I just lump them in with The Prodigy and leave it at that.

If I was forced, by way of a gun to the head or the horrifying threat of having to listen to BBC Radio 1 for a week solid, to give Pendulum a genre, I would probably say "dance metal". The heavy and distorted instruments and smashing drums certainly give it a, for want of a better word, metallic aspect, but the often-constant beat makes it a dance tune. "Showdown"is no different.

In fact, "Showdown" is, if anything, more metal than usual for Pendulum. The heavy (and immensely cool) guitar riff, which pounds away for only a short while before giving way to different synths, suggests an inclination towards 'real' instruments in their single, or at least less obviously electronic instruments. The vocals, which only really make an appearance on the intro, are unfortunately a bit samey to Propane Nightmares, one of the previous singles from the album In Silico, on which "Showdown" is the first track. Not really a single which will get the popular vote, though it may yet become a hardcore fan's favourite. So, to summarise, Showdown is a bit much of a muchness, and it won't be a classic, but it's still pretty good, and you won't hear a better riff on a dance track without a great amount of searching. I guarantee that it'll stick in your head, which is more that can be said for the rest of the song, or, indeed, the other mixes featured on the single.

The clipz remix slows things down a bit, until the (frankly) boring bit comes in. I haven't heard that many songs that are quite as tedious. An attempt at making it fast-paced misses the mark completely, and just gives you the impression that the DJ has mistaken 'upbeat' for 'inventive', or, indeed, 'good'. I won't lie to you, I couldn't even listen to the whole thing. With a minute to go, I'd had enough, and I moved on to the next remix.

The excision remix turns the vocals into devilish speech by slowing it down, and the constant growling of synths and zooming sweeps do make it quite dark. The heavy distortion on pretty much everything is alright for a while, but it gets a bit too much when you realise that there's actually nothing else going on.

The fourth remix, the red light remix, requires me to speak out against too much ducking. For those who don't know, ducking is not, as you might think, dogging on an aeroplane. Ducking is a method of compressing some sounds when triggered by, for example, the kick drum, so that the the kick drum can be made louder. This happens an extreme amount on dance music, and it really, really annoys me. How revellers can't notice every other instrument being removed every time the kick drum hits, I will never know. But it sounds awful, and so does this mix. They even try to turn it into an effect, for crying out loud. And - this is the bit that really gets me - the red light remix doesn't actually do triggered ducking. It just gives the impression of doing it. What the hell? I think that it's similar to the increasing trend of new singers (so I hear) who actually try to sound like their favourite artists when they use auto-tune (which, when overused, gives the robotic-sounding voice probably best illustrated by Victoria Beckham in those turd-cum-tunes that she made a few years back - also T-Pain and originally Cher).

NB. Jesus H. Christ, God in Heaven, I'm trying to listen to it again and it sounds worse. Please, avoid this mix at all costs.

Anyway, to round up, Pendulum = good (though not spectacular, this time), the various included re-mixes = absolutely terrible.

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Last edited by Heron : January 23, 2009 at 06:42 PM. Reason: Video added