March-December 1999

The 6-Track E.P.

Schizophrenic
Naked
Vacant Flow
15
Half Past May
Alliance

Alice in Wonderland; The Official Theatrical Score (by Matt Mepham and Mike Vasas)

Alice in Wonderland Theme
Down the Rabbit Whole
The Cat
Blue Notes?
The Duchess, Cook and Footman
On the Wall
The Flower Dance
The Alice in Technoland Dance
It's a Mad, Mad, Mad Tea Party
They Look Important
The Queen
Tweedledee and Tweedledumb
A Strange Game
Mock Turtle and the Griffin
The Trial Scene
Armada
Major & Minor Study
Mr. Wobbleneck
Tah Dah!
The Show (Theater Version)
Lonely in Wonderland
The Show

Thrah (by Pendulum)

Could You?
Changes in Tide
Edgar Allan
Stonewalling
You
Cathexis
Rose in the Garden
Cliffhanger
I'll Be Your Superstar
The Lyrical Downfall
Melisma
An Ending
The Show
Instant Scorn

Three official recordings document what we'll call "The Pendulum Years," although there was plenty of material not included here. All the stuff listed above was recorded on an old Gateway 2000 (that's right, when they had included the 2000), which I think had 1.2 gigs of space total, which included program files and Windows files. So, we're looking at like 600 megs of space tops to work with. Because we wanted to save space, and we didn't know any better we recorded all this stuff at 22khz as opposed to the 44.1 khz that is CD standard. This meant the quality was pretty freakin' awful!!

We thought it was awesome though. Ready for radio. What we didn't realize, beyond the fact that the recording quality was crap, that the music wasn't that good. On the whole, my lyrics are pretty wince-inducing to me now, but that's not a big deal. Overall though, I'm still extremely proud of all of it because a lot of the material was written when I was 15 and 16. I hadn't really even begun to experience music outside of my comfort zone. I was a late bloomer in finding my own musical collector's bug. So when I look at what I probably had listened to by the time these records were mad I'm not too surprised it turned out the way it did. There are some moments, though.

The score to Alice is especially cool to me because it was the first time we really experimented with synths and guitars for reasons other than to express teenage angst and romance. Matt and I were recently talking about how we really thought it was fantastic back when it came out, and in some ways I think that excitement for music is something I want to hold on to. Not so much the blind arrogance to things, but the excitement that you have something important and special that you want everybody to hear. That's still cool.