Pendulum and Knife Party’s Rob Swire reveals sad news about their MIDI Tech

Before Knife Party, Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen were heavily involved with drum & bass and electronic rock band Pendulum. By fusing rock music with electronic music, their live setup required a lot of gear and preparation, meaning they needed plenty of technicians to set everything up before the band came onto the stage. One of these jobs was a MIDI technician, where the main role is to link up all musical instruments with computer equipment.

Pendulum frontman Rob Swire announced the upsetting news via his personal Twitter account, saying that Ben Adams, the MIDI tech who had been working for Pendulum over the past ten years, had been diagnosed with Motor Neuron Disease a couple of years ago and has got to a stage where his condition has got to a point where he can no longer work.

One of Ben’s last shows was perhaps one of Pendulum’s biggest where they headlined Ultra Music Festival in Miami back in 2016 and even impressed Minecraft founder Notch who tweeted Rob Swire saying “I was there at Ultra, and Ben really midi teched the [expletive] out of that show“.

The band has decided to set up an online fundraising campaign to help fund Ben’s needs and have already gained over £8,000 from 95 people. The link to the page can be found within Rob Swire’s tweet below.

Read the full statement here:

Please read below and donate if you can afford to do so…https://t.co/rKOX7315po pic.twitter.com/CDk5AeaVCL

— Rob Swire (@rob_swire) May 23, 2017