BIO
As Pendulum’s career progressed, Rob Swire mentioned several times on his Twitter account that he would like to begin experimenting with different types of electronic music. The first piece of the side project’s material that was uploaded onto the internet was on Rob Swire’s Soundcloud page which he titled “Not Pendulum”. This was later revealed to be a section of their remix of Swedish House Mafia’s “Save the World”.
Knife Party played their debut performance at Space, Ibiza on 5 August 2011, and released a free download of their set the following day. On 12 August 2011, Knife Party featured on Annie Mac’s Radio 1 minimix. The mix featured early versions of several Knife Party tracks; Intro, Tourniquet, Antidote, Save the World (Knife Party Remix), Internet Friends, Zoology, Sleaze, The Box, Fire Hive, Suffer and Crush on You (Knife Party Remix).
Their first EP, 100% No Modern Talking was released digitally through Pendulum’s imprint record label EarStorm. It was released as free download from their official website, Soundcloud and Facebook, as well as being available for purchase on Beatport and iTunes on 12 December 2011. The EP originally was to feature ‘Back to the Z-List’ but was replaced with ‘Destroy Them with Lazers’ as the duo had decided to abandon the track. A tweet on 6 December 2011 suggested the possibility of a remix EP in the future. The EP title refers to the lack of “Modern Talking”, an oscillator in the software synthesiser NI Massive commonly used to create “talking” basslines.
Knife Party remixed Labrinth’s third single Last Time, with Rob uploading an eleven-second preview to his Soundcloud. The remix in its entirety was uploaded to UKF Music on 15 February 2012. As well as being released on the EP, it featured on the deluxe edition of Labrinth’s debut album Electronic Earth.
Their second EP Rage Valley was released digitally through EarStorm and Big Beat. Rob tweeted a screenshot taken on his PC showing three of the four final Rage Valley tracks, captioning the photo “3 down, 1 to go”, referring to the mastering of the final track “Sleaze”. The title track “Rage Valley” was originally named “Fuck Em” but the title was changed “for secret shady reasons you will never know” according to Rob. “Sleaze” was also re-titled, the original being called “Until They Kick Us Out”. Originally Rage Valley was set to be released before the end of April 2012, but due to multiple setbacks the release was delayed for four weeks. It was made available for purchase on Beatport on 27 May 2012 and iTunes on 3 June 2012.
