Friday, May 16, 2008

As Wiley and his "Rolex" this week inch ever closer to the Top Spot--only Madonna and Timberlake in the way now, a pox on their eyes--another Nuum incursion into the UK pop chart slips out of the Top 10. I'm talking about Pendulum and their drum'n'bass/metal fusion "Propane Nightmares", which peaked at #9. Kind of stretching the Nuum to its conceptual limit here: the group are from Perth, West Australia, and although they were a force in D&B a few years back they decided to go rock and become a live group (a Prodigy-type move and indeed they famously remixed "Voodoo People" some while ago) So while their sound still has that jacknifing hard-stomping sub-Bad Company beat it's slowed down quite a bit from d&B's ZFI and is topped by Enter Shikari-style transcendo-metal tuneage(Shikari of course being huge d&b fans, repeatedly interrupting their live set with little bursts of almost touchingly wack Venetian Snares mimicry they've knocked up at home). The resulting composite is... pretty horrible actually. Have a listen for yourself . Or just look at the picture.