Rob Swire

Robert Swire-Thompson (born 5 November 1982) is an Australian record producer, singer, songwriter, and DJ.

He is the founder and vocalist of the drum and bass

and electronic rock band Pendulum, as well as DJ and co-founder of electro house duo Knife Party formed of Swire and Gareth McGrillen.

He went to Scotch College, Swanbourne, graduating in 1999, where he first met bandmate Gareth McGrillen.

Over the next three years he worked as a record producer for several local drum and bass, breakbeat and metal bands, during which time he occasionally used the stage name "Anscenic".

He also made a couple of independent releases with former hardcore techno label Hardline Rekordingz, including a collaboration with the label's founder, Animal Intelligence, which was titled "Fat American Bitchcore".

Only twenty lathe cut copies of the record were distributed, to help promote the label's 2001–2002 tour of New Zealand.

Swire also produced a track titled "Electrodes on the Skull" which was released alongside three tracks by other artists signed to the label at that time.

In 2002, Swire formed drum and bass act Pendulum with fellow Xygen bandmate McGrillen and local DJ Paul "El Hornet" Harding.

Swire relocated to the United Kingdom the following year, along with the other members of the band, and the band soon gained widespread underground recognition for their tracks "Vault" and "Trail of Sevens".

Over the next two years Swire worked on material for the band's debut album, Hold Your Colour, primarily as the band's songwriter and producer alongside McGrillen.

Originally from Perth, Western Australia, Swire relocated to the United Kingdom in 2003 with fellow Pendulum co-founders Gareth McGrillen and Paul "El Hornet" Harding.

Swire has since fulfilled a broad spectrum of roles as a member of Pendulum, ranging from songwriting to singing while performing live with an unusual guitar-like MIDI controller – Starr Labs' Ztar Z6S-XPA.

Swire also plays guitar, bass, keyboards, percussion, and other instruments.

He is sometimes referred to by the stage name Anscenic.

Rob Swire was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia.

When he was a child, his family lived in Harare in Zimbabwe for five years.

During his residence, he created a song which was played on a local Zimbabwe radio station.

The album was released in 2005, to considerable commercial success.

When the band began performing live in October 2006, Swire became the band's lead singer in addition to playing a Ztar – a guitar-like MIDI controller – during live performances.

After the band's first tour they started work on a second album, In Silico, for which Swire featured as the main vocalist, after already appearing on tracks such as "Spiral", "Hold Your Colour", "Streamline", and "Still Grey" in order to keep a consistent sound.

In addition, he continued his former roles of writer and producer, although he delegated the task of vocal mixing to a professional mixing engineer.

Swire was also extensively involved in creating publicity material for the new album, as he explained during an interview with Lucy Chakaodza of The Independent.

Pendulum released their third album titled Immersion in the UK on 24 May 2010.

This is Pendulum's only number one album, topping the UK Albums Chart.

In 2011, Swire formed the electro house duo with Pendulum co-founder Gareth McGrillen.

Pendulum announced on 19 June 2012 that they had split.

Swire stated, "We're having too much fun with the Knife Party project. It's also great because Pendulum, towards the end, sort of felt like we were doing it because we had to, and that's never a fun way to do music. Whereas Knife Party is pretty much solely us doing what we want to and if no one likes it we don't care."

This can be equated to Rob Swire feeling limited to a genre under the band Pendulum, and he has stated publicly over tweets that he hates the restriction that a fan base can bring, he does enjoy continuing to produce music.

On 22 August 2013, Swire revealed that a new Pendulum album will probably be released sometime in 2014.

Despite this, Swire ruled out the possibility of Pendulum performing live again.

However, Pendulum reunited at the 2016 Ultra Music Festival in Miami, Florida.

On 9 January 2017, Pendulum confirmed to be reuniting for a world tour and possibly releasing a new album, with Swire also returning.

They performed live at several music festivals internationally throughout 2017.

On 29 June 2018, Pendulum's album, aptly titled "The Reworks" was released, composed solely of remixes from artists such as Skrillex, Moby, Pegboard Nerds, Noisia and the Knife Party alias.

Remixes from Noisia, Knife Party, Icarus and Skrillex were released as singles beforehand.

On 17 September 2020, Pendulum released two singles "Driver" and "Nothing for Free", making this the first new material in ten years since Immersion.

A music video for "Nothing for Free" was produced, and the two songs were included in a live set performed by Pendulum at Spitbank Fort on 2 October 2020.

Swire indicated that for foreseeable future, Pendulum would continue to gradually release tracks in small chunks similar to the September 2020 release, rather than wait to release an entire album at once.

This concluded in early 2021 as the listed songs plus 2 new tracks released in their EP Elemental.