Rob Swire
Background information
Birth name	Robert Swire Thompson
Also known as	Anscenic
Born	(1982-11-05) 5 November 1982 (age 29)
Origin	Perth, Western Australia
Genres	Electronica, drum and bass (as Anscenic), electronic rock (with Pendulum) House, hardcore, drumstep (as Rob Swire) Alternative metal (with Xygen) House, dubstep, drumstep, moombahton (with Knife Party)
Occupations	Singer, songwriter, musician, audio mixing, record producer, DJ
Instruments	Vocals, synthesizer, guitar, bass guitar, percussion, keyboards
Years active	1998–present
Labels	Warner Music Group, Breakbeat Kaos, Hardline Rekordingz
Associated acts	Xygen, Pendulum, Knife Party, deadmau5
Notable instruments
Starr Labs' Ztar Z6S-XPA CME UF70

Rob Swire (born Robert Swire Thompson on 5 November 1982), is an Australian record producer, singer-songwriter and keyboardist. Swire is best known as lead singer and producer of Australian electronic band Pendulum and is sometimes referred to by the stage name Anscenic. Originally from Perth, Western Australia, he 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 song writing to singing while performing live with an unusual guitar-like MIDI controller – Starr Labs' Ztar Z6S-XPA. Swire can also play guitar, bass, keyboards and percussion.

Biography[link]

Early life[link]

Swire was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. He attended Scotch College, Swanbourne, graduating in 1999, where he first met bandmate Gareth McGrillen.^[1] 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 label Hardline Rekordingz, including a collaboration with the label's founder, Animal Intelligence, which was titled "Fat American Bitchcore".^[2] 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.^[3]

Pendulum[link]

In 2002, Swire formed drum and bass act Pendulum with fellow Xygen bandmate McGrillen and local DJ Paul "El Hornet" Harding.^[4] 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".^[5] 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. 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 relegated 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.^[6]

Pendulum have since made a third album, titled Immersion, which was released in the UK on 24 May 2010. This is Pendulum's only number 1 album, charting highest in the UK album chart.

Other work[link]

Swire recorded vocals for deadmau5's track, "Ghosts 'n' Stuff".^[7] The music video has now also been released. Swire also co-wrote Rihanna's songs "Rude Boy" and "Roc Me Out", and contributed bass guitar and backing vocals to the songs.^[8] He is currently working on a new project entitled Knife Party with fellow Pendulum band member, Gareth McGrillen. The Knife Party remix of Swedish House Mafia's "Save the World" was Zane Lowe's 'Hottest Record in the World' on 31 May 2011.^[9] Knife Party released their debut EP on 12 December 2011 titled 100% No Modern Talking via their website and Facebook as well as Beatport and their official Soundcloud page. There has also been a collaboration made between both Knife Party and Swedish House Mafia called "Antidote" which has now hit over 7 million views on YouTube. A second EP, titled "Rage Valley" was announced via the Knife Party twitter page and was released on Sunday the 27th of May; this EP contains the songs "Rage Valley", "Centipede", "Sleaze", and "Bonfire".

Music[link]

Production[link]

Swire has worked as a record producer since 1999, most recently for Pendulum while producing the album In Silico, during which he was required to create demos, record the tracks, and mix the album. He is responsible for mixing most of the band's material, although more recently he has avoided mixing vocals, stating that, "Since I was doing the vocals, it's a bit harder to keep the objectivity on the engineer's side".^[10] To avoid spending too long worrying about sound quality, Swire drafted the demos for In Silico using Commodore 64 and Nintendo emulators, and basic synthesiser sounds.^[11] To record the album, the band travelled to various studios where the live musicians, including Swire himself, recorded acoustic drums, guitars, bass and vocals. In addition to recording the various tracks that comprised each song, Swire recorded samples of the instruments used so that, if he wasn't happy with one of the tracks, he could then play the part himself using a keyboard sampler.^[11] Swire has used Pro Tools for recording audio and Steinberg's Cubase for production, but now mainly uses Steinberg's Nuendo for production and post-production editing. Swire records tracks using both hardware synthesizers and virtual instruments. For live performance, he transfers sounds for each song into a sampler, which he uses with MIDI controllers. This allows him to be able to replicate the sounds recorded without having to tour with numerous synthesizers.

Performance[link]

Swire has performed a wide range of instruments while recording material for Pendulum, including guitar and electric piano on Hold Your Colour,^[12] synthesiser, bass and percussion on In Silico^[13] and synthesizer and guitar on Immersion. He has also been the band's main vocalist since the release of In Silico, for the purpose of creating a consistent sounding album.^[10] When performing live with the band, Swire typically plays a guitar-like MIDI controller, Starr Labs' Ztar Z6, in addition to performing vocals on tracks for which his voice was originally used. Swire's favoured MIDI controller keyboards when performing live are the CME UF70 Master Keyboard and the Korg Kontrol 49 MIDI Keyboard. He also uses a Novation Launchpad, which controls Ableton Live. An Aviom A-16 CS mixer is used by Swire to control instrument and microphone levels.

Pendulum are avid users of the Muse Research Receptor Unit, a computer designed to run and store digital and virtual instrument settings such as virtual synthesisers and guitar preamplifiers. Several of these units can be seen occupying the racks that also serve as a docking station for the band's laptops and other computerised hardware. A small computer screen displays the sound setup for the song that is being played. A vocoder can also be triggered by assigned buttons on the body of the Ztar. He also uses pitch correction and a Rocktron talk box during live performances of The Other Side.

Discography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rob Swire discography at Discogs
• Rob Swire on Myspace
• Rob Swire at rolldabeats