A Pendulum DJ set is not for the faint hearted – not to say their set at Brown Alley was exceptionally good or bad, but the squashed sunken pit, the moshing and the crowd surfing certainly made for a stimulating experience.

Such theatre kept people engaged for two hours of eclectic drum ‘n bass with revelers peering down from balconies surrounding the pit and stage, all-comers witnessing an album preview for a release due out in 2010

Having never seen Pendulum before, their live shows are the stuff of sweat and exertion, but for this DJ set they seemed to delve into more standard drum n bass DJ convention. Fronted by an MC, his yelling and singing was at times a little too constant, but he certainly earned his weekend wages.

Pendulum the band is a tricky outfit to anticipate. Hold Your Colour was an album that brought critical acclaim, while In Silico sought a more rock n roll approach to drum n bass. It seems that Immersion, the new album due in 2010, is following in this seem vein.

Most disappointingly, it seemed that Pendulum don’t look to their old productions as crowd-kick-starters. When Slam made its triumphant rounds of the speakers it was cut short twenty seconds in, only for the MC to converse with the crowd. Then Pendulum’s remix of Voodoo People was strangled into Ian Carey’s Get Shaky. A clever touch, I’ll admit, was a drum ‘n bass remix of the SBS news theme but of course this got about as much airtime as it does on the television.

All I can gather from their time on stage is that Pendulum are a little confused. Trying to appeal to old school drum n bass fanatics while trying to embrace a new audience with lyrics and guitars is a tough task. The path they’re following seems to be taking them further and further from their roots, to a ‘rock n drum n bass’ fusion. A larger audience may lay in waiting, but a smaller few may be a little disappointed.