It was just last week that ITM broke the news about dance music’s premier cover act, Pretendulum, who’d been booked to play their first show in tribute to Perth electronica heroes Pendulum. ITMers seemed to love, or at least laugh at the idea of a Pendulum tribute group so when we scored some time with the real deal, Pendulum themselves, this morning, we just couldn’t help but ask if they’d heard of the homage.

“Somebody sent me the link just the other day, actually,” Pendulum mainstay Gareth McGrillen laughed down the phoneline from Croatia. “To my surprise, they’re actually some mates of ours! Patch and MPK were some of first guys to book us for drum ‘n bass parties in Adelaide, so I think they thought we’d get a laugh out of it.”

Assuring ITM that there was no ill-will between Pendulum and their Adelaide imitators, McGrillen hypothesized as to the roots of Pretendulum, saying that the tribute act began from an incident of mistaken identity over the summer.

“We played at a party in Tasmania and after the show these girls came up to us and asked if we were Pendulum,” he said with a grin. “Patch was with us and they were looking at three of us and said ‘you’re Rob, you’re Gareth and you must be El Hornet,’ despite the fact that Paul who’s El Hornet is a good foot taller and about 50 kilos heavier than him. And he played along with it and had a blast. So I think that’s where it came from.”

Stay tuned to ITM for our full interview with Pendulum and more news on the way. In the meantime check out ITM’s assessment of Immersion over here.