The Prodigy - Classic or Dud ?

Experience is also terrific - all their best singles except Firestarter on one disc. PAY CLOSE ATTENTION! Etc.

Jilted Generation has some good stuff on but overall it's too long and it's their weakest, and "The Narcotic Suite" is just awful.

They are also of course classic for having the worst gatefold sleeves of the 90s - Experience was bad enough with the badly drawn hippie cyborg top trumps but Jilted Generation has one of the most terrible drawings of all time ever and I laugh like a drain every time I see it.

The fact that the hits from 'Experience' still get young kids on the floor at the club pretty much sums Howlett's skills up for me. But I wouldn't touch that upcoming album with a 10-foot cattleprod.

and yes, there is a vast difference in how they are percieved in the us and the uk, especially by the, uh, younger generation. or, as a paraphrase i used in a mix tape that i pinched from our own mr. ewing: "it may surprise listeners born after 1980 to know that the prodigy were once a pop band." jilted and fat of the land may be grate, but i doubt i'll ever be arsed at this point to find out.

Think about it, why was the cat hanging around with a small boy. The cat sounded old, lets say at least 5. That would make him 35 in catty years. What a perv!!

I now finally see Liam's meaning behind the whole song. It was a political statement, the cat was John Major. He must be a Thatcher fan. Interesting shit.

Stupid "Prodigy are techno" assumptions :

"Experience and Music For The Jilted Generation are classics - the first as being possibly the only truly great hardcore techno album" - Tim.

"...kept hearing fantastic banging widescreen techno in the pub and saying tell me fellow drinkers what is this, and fellow drinkers looking at me funny and saying it's the Prodigy" - Tom Ewing.

Get a clue, guys. Prodigy were never techno.

More false rubbish :

"...they were doing the whole act with the DAT running" - Alacrán.

I was there. It was live.

Downright lack of taste :

"...the worst gatefold sleeves of the 90s ... Jilted Generation has one of the most terrible drawings of all time ever" - Tom Ewing.

"Abysmal" - The Pinefox.

Absolutely pathetic attempt at 'humour' :

"Also, while I'm here, I think that the cat in "Charly" was gay. A revelation I know, but hey, I think it's true. Not only that, but he was a pedophile. Think about it, why was the cat hanging around with a small boy. The cat sounded old, lets say at least 5. That would make him 35 in catty years. What a perv!! I now finally see Liam's meaning behind the whole song. It was a political statement, the cat was John Major. He must be a Thatcher fan." - Dave McDermott.

Iain Lee lives!

Damn, I wish I still had access to Lexis-Nexis at work. Fun and useful.

For my reply to your message Peter I suggest Google Groups. But damn, it's nice to know you're still out there. I feel all nostalgic now. BRING ON HEATHER THE GARBAGE FAN!

x0x0

PS Prodigy? Pff, fuck the Prodigy.

Oh, I spoke too soon. We did clash at least once, but I can't find his response to my post. Anyway, hi Pete!

For Scott: Iain Lee = monstrously unfunny TV comedian w/boggly eyes, recently removed from desperately dire so-called satirical prog The 11 O'Clock Show after someone at Channel 4 finally realised he was rubbish.

Thanks

Peter

BBBY GLSSP = WNKR! @# ! @# !

I still thenk they are/were absolute rub.

I like what Tom says about the inner sleeve to "Jilted Generation" and just thinking about it made me laugh a little bit right now.

Is this the historick first instance of the ILM "random Googler", I wonder?

Hah! I love it. What's wrong with saying fuck the system?

It kind of makes you think, are they saying that the people who wanted to ban the Prodigy, over the years, are super-intelligent and hence they achieved something great by offending these people out of their seats.

Or are they saying, these people were stupid to try and ban us, they are in fact complete reactionary morons, in which case isn't their music kind of shit?

I don't really understand, but one thing seems clear, and that is that are openly and overtly announcing the importance of the reciprocal relationship they have with people who found/find them offensive, be it their fans or right wing American christians.

I mean I can understand a teenager buying into this, the Prodigy did used to seem kind of cool, but at this stage, and at the end of your career, are they trying to say "THE PRODIGY: WE OFFENDED MORONS, SOME OF WHOM HATED US AND OTHERS BOUGHT OUR RECORDS"

I hated Firestarter. Don't get me wrong, I liked the first two albums, but Firestarter was just plain shit. Making Keith Flint an icon was a crime against society.

No, that was Eamon.

god i really need to learn about this stuff.

It's short for 'killer bumps'.

for a long time they were the only dahnce act i had records by, probably cos they made albums and i never bought singles, and 'most' great dahnce tracks were singles, and i was too intimidated to find out where i could get them on comps, etc.

Still an amazingly creative maker of breaks sounds though, "Poison" is amazing.

Once Classic, now very Dud.

-- Tom (ebro...), October 18th, 2001 1:00 AM.

This thread has prompted me to listen to The Prodigy again after several years, and I've just remembered how great Claustrophobic Sting (last part of the Narcotic Suite) is. Four years too late, I'd like to disagree with the above post.

Experience and Jilted are about to be re-released with all sorts of extra bits and bobs. I for one am very excited about the Jilted redux - what a fucking album! And yes, Claustrophobic Sting is fucking awesome.

Full gen(eration):

Few artists or bands managed to release epoch-defining albums. To each scene there are
the chosen few long players that have taken their place in the canon of records that changed
the shape of popular culture. Psychedelia has Sgt Pepper’s…, punk has Never Mind the
Bollocks…, trip hop has Blue Lines… The list is endless with each scene, each genre and
every subgenre declaring key albums as defining moments. But only a small handful actually
make it onto these lists… Like I said, very few artists or bands manage to release epoch-
defining albums. And even fewer manage two.

Welcome (back) to The Prodigy, who have released more than their share of essential, era-
defining albums. None more so then these two albums; ‘The Prodigy Experience’ and ‘Music
for the Jilted Generation’ – each a perfect summary of their time, each a signpost to brave
new futures.

1992 Britain. The free party movement had evolved into the spectacular turbo-driven rave
scene. The media had turned weekend enjoyment into full-blown moral panic while the
police seemed to devote much of their overtime to chasing down these folk devil ravers.
Huge events drew like-minded souls from everywhere with the promise of hedonistic
pleasure and the sense of enlightened positivity gained from a heady mix of good pills and
dancing all night to pounding, furious breaks-driven hardcore. The air was filled with a sense
of victory. In the war of the raves, it was the ravers who seemed to be winning. And the
Prodigy were there, soundtracking the battles, scoring the victories and capturing the all
round joi de vivre with their brilliantly energised singles.

It was into these defiantly grinning times that The Prodigy unleashed their debut album ‘The
Prodigy Experience’ In late November ’92 and it immediately flew in the face of that over
used idiom, ‘dance bands can’t make good albums’. In ‘Experience’, Liam Howlett and co
succeeded in combining the energy of the rave with stunning and timeless production
depths. “I remember I had this idea of doing like a rave concept album”, says Liam “but in
the end I thought it was too restricting. What I wanted was a full experience, you know like
you get with one of the early Pink Floyd albums. Something for every mood but still
obviously from the rave scene.” To the Prodigy fans most of the album came as no shock,
featuring as it did versions of all of their top 5 singles to date, alongside other live faves from
the band’s already incendiary shows.

The singles appear in brilliantly reworked versions. ‘Charly’ has all but the slightest hint of
the cartoon cat eliminated, in its place sits an adrenalised hard and dark, cut up breaks
version sub-titled ‘Trip into Drum and Bass Version’. While some two years later the media
would grapple with the notion that drum’n’bass was the new version of jungle, The Prodigy

EXPERIENCE
JERICHO

MUSIC REACH 1/2/3/4

WIND IT UP

YOUR LOVE REMIX

HYPERSPEED G-FORCE PART 2

CHARLY

TRIP INTO DRUM AND BASS VERSION

OUT OF SPACE

EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE

155 AND RISING

WEATHER EXPERIENCE

FIRE SUNRISE VERSION

RUFF IN THE JUNGLE BIZNESS

DEATH OF THE PRODIGY DANCERS LIVE

RELEASE DATE : 4 AUGUST 2008

LABEL : XL RECORDINGS

had been describing the subterranean sound thus since November 1992.

Elsewhere, ‘Everybody In The Place’ takes on a fresher, more vital air about it while ‘G-Force’
is all but transformed into a full on hyper speed anthem going under the name ‘Hyperspeed

G-Force Pt 2’. ‘Out of Space”’ (the single that followed the album) presents a rough neck
skanking groove with a lift from Max Romeo’s classic ‘Chase the Devil’.

If proof was needed of The Prodigy mainman Liam Howlett’s true potential it lay in the
album’s finest moment ‘Weather Report’, an almost psychedelic episode that opens with a
low drone and weather forecasts before emerging into a grandiose, yet somber string-led
refrain. The track then collapsed into a series of abstract noises before launching a
downtempo breakbeat that carried the vibe towards it’s huge, thundering climax; complete
with the full on acid madness of a rampant 303 squelching with the intensity of a lightning
bolt. A brilliant track that was to give a huge hint as to the future of The Prodigy. A far more
complex and assured sound that was moving in completely different direction to route the
rave scene was disappearing down.

‘Experience’ entered the charts at number 12, selling over 200,000 copies over the following
weeks. As a result The Prodigy not only successfully managed to move into the territory of
the serious, long-term artist (until that point dominated by the rock scene) but also managed
to completely sidestep the fact that the days of the rave were coming to an end.

This, of course, was Howlett’s intention. It was as much a statement of the band’s future as
it was a summing up of the rave era. In every inch of the album Howlett was playing with
preconceptions of what this scene’s music should sound like, what the scene actually was
and how it should be represented. Indeed, even the album artwork challenged the
stereotyped computer-generated, multi-coloured images of the era. It’s plain black and
white cover opened up to present had drawn cartoon images of the band members
fashioned by future author of The Beach, Alex Garland. Coming as Experience did at a time
when dance artists simply didn’t release albums Liam Howlett had nothing from the
contemporary scene to use as a standard. As a result he set his own standards, something
that would remain a feature of his work.

Released here with an extra disc of rare tracks, mixes and live versions (including ‘Android’
from the very first Prodigy single, originally drawn from the demo Liam had sent to XL), this
all new expanded Experience offers the definitive version of the rave era’s greatest album.

MARTIN JAMES 2008

EXPANDED

YOUR LOVE

RUFF IN THE JUNGLE BIZNESS

UPLIFTING VIBES REMIX

CHARLY ALLEY CAT REMIX

FIRE EDIT

WE ARE THE RUFFEST

WEATHER EXPERIENCE

TOP BUZZ REMIX

WIND IT UP REWOUND

G-FORCE ENERGY FLOW

CRAZY MAN

OUT OF SPACE

TECHNO UNDERWORLD REMIX

EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE

FAIRGROUND REMIX

ANDROID

OUT OF SPACE

LIVE FROM PUKKELPOP 2005


DISC 1 1 INTRO 2 BREAK & ENTER

3 THEIR LAW (FEATURING POP WILL EAT ITSELF)

4 FULL THROTTLE 5 VOODOO PEOPLE 6 SPEEDWAY (THEME FROM FASTLANE) 7 THE HEAT (THE ENERGY) 8 POISON

9 NO GOOD (START THE DANCE) 10 ONE LOVE (EDIT) THE NARCOTIC SUITE

11 3 KILOS 12 SKYLINED 13 CLAUSTROPHOBIC STING

DISC 2

1 VOODOO PEOPLE (RADIO MAIDA VALE SESSION)

2 POISON (RADIO MAIDA VALE SESSION)

3 BREAK AND ENTER (2005 LIVE EDIT) 4 THEIR LAW (LIVE AT PUKKELPOP) 5 NO GOOD (START THE DANCE) (BAD FOR YOU MIX) 6 SCIENIDE

7 GOA (THE HEAT THE ENERGY PART 2)

8 RAT POISON

9 VOODOO PEOPLE (DUST BROTHERS REMIX)

RELEASE DATE : 4 AUGUST 2008 LABEL : XL RECORDINGS

MORE MUSIC FOR THE JILTED GENERATION

Soon after the release of ‘Experience the rave scene turned sour. Draconian anti-noise
measures were placed on legal raves and government legislations were put in place that
would outlaw the free party vibe forever. The government proposed its Criminal Justice
Bill that would turn an entire generation of people into criminals overnight. Unwittingly
the simple act of dancing in a field to a loud sound system had become a political act.
Even more unwittingly The Prodigy would become figureheads for this politicisation
when they released their second album ‘Music for the Jilted Generation in July 1994.

It was the beginning of 1994, The Prodigy had scored six top twenty hits in the UK,
they’d been awarded a gold disc for Experience, they’d toured through much of the
world and still their average age was only twenty three. However the next task of taking
things forward now fell squarely upon Liam’s shoulders. For the first time since the band
started they took a lengthy rest from their constant performing so that Liam could get to
work on the next album. He knew he had to move things beyond the limitations of the
rave arena, and in the process of taking the Prodigy live experience around the globe he
had come into close contact with bands that had excited him in a way that reminded him
of the early days of the free parties. Bands like Rage Against the Machine and Jane’s
Addiction who had a vibe and an energy that he immediately hooked into.

“When we were doing all of these shows in America I started listening to a lot more guitar
based stuff.” he explains “Up until then I’d always ignored anything that was in any way
rock because it just meant leather jackets and greasy hair to me. Then I heard
‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana and it just blew me away.”

Originally penciled in as both ‘Music for the Cool Youth Juvenilia’ and the potentially
more controversial ‘Music for Joy Riders’, the album Music for the Jilted Generation was
a far more assured, experimental and eclectic journey than that offered on the debut
album. The album’s intro employed an appropriation of dialogue from the film The
Lawnmower Man, featuring the sound of someone hammering away at a typewriter
before announcing: “So I’ve decided to take my music back underground, to stop it
falling into the wrong hands”.

It was a statement of intent for Liam. No longer was he a part off any particular scene,
The Prodigy had transcended any limitations imposed by particular genres, instead he
took what ever he wanted, from which ever genre he wanted, in order to create music
that was The Prodigy and not a representation of a particular scene. In a sense therefore
the theme of the album was less ‘party’ than ‘personal’ politics.

The subsequent range of styles, tempos and flavours was breathtaking. From the darkly
brooding delinquency of ‘Break and Enter’ to the hard and fast techno metal of ‘Their
Law’ (which featured post-grebo sample hooligans Pop Will Eat Itself), from the up
tempo techno soundtrack rush of ‘Speedway’ to the down tempo b-boy grooves of
‘Poison’ the album displayed Liam’s abilities to be far reaching.

One of the most outstanding aspects of “…Jilted…” was Liam’s creative freedom that
enabled him to explore ideas unhindered. Nowhere is this clearer than on the concept
section of the album. Collectively called ‘The Narcotic Suite’, it was made up of three
separate tracks which moved from the sixties film noire soundtrack of ‘3 Kilos’, through
the techno hedonism of ‘Skylined’ and then into the deep, suffocating grooves of
‘Claustrophobic Sting’. A sequence of tracks that saw Liam moving through styles with
an in depth knowledge and understanding of both his sources and his ambitions.
Elsewhere ‘Voodoo People’ featured a hard shuffling snare with an insistent flute refrain
which was overlaid by a guitar sample of Nirvana’s ‘Very Ape’.

The album’s release in July ‘94 was met by a hugely positive response from fans and
critics alike. For those who had followed the band this album mirrored an almost
collective growth. The so-called summers of love had turned out to offer little more than
hollow ideals. Furthermore ravers had grown up since the early days and the Prodigy
had grown right along side their contemporaries.

Music for the Jilted Generation entered the the UK chart at #1 and remained in the top
twenty for four months after its release, going gold after only two weeks. It was at this
point the most successful underground dance album of all time and a few months later
it was short listed for the prestigious Mercury Award. Despite losing out to adult house
sounds of M People, the guest critics for the television coverage were almost unanimous
in their praise for ‘Jilted’ with journalist Miranda Sawyer describing it as “the only
modern sounding album” among the nominees. Where ‘Experience’ proved that a
singles oriented dance act could produce a great, era-defining album, Music for the
Jilted Generation is the set that truly set out the cultural terrain for the music scene of
the years that followed. It remains the blueprint for dance acts with a taste for rock, and
rock acts with a love of electronic music. It has inspired and invigorated everyone from
The Chemical Brothers to The Beastie Boys, Oasis to Gorrilaz It counts among its fans
Dave Grohl, Klaxons, Jay-Z and Pendulum. Newer bands like 30 Seconds To Mars and
CSS cite the album as much as old warhorses like Paul McCartney and Bono. ‘Music for
the Jilted Generation’ is in every sense the first album to truly reach beyond the UK
dance scene and reach cross genre, generational and ideological divides. It’s still only
true representation of Britain in the mid-90s (no retro rock Brit Pop or record company
manufactured fodder here). It remains a brilliant all-reaching act of genius that will
continue to inspire artists young and old to reach way beyond their own potential. This
2008 version comes complete with live tracks from the band’s excellent Zane Lowe set
for Radio 1 in 2006 alongside rare mixes and overlooked tracks. It is in every way the
perfect version of one of the greatest albums to have emerged from the UK.

Two albums. Two moments in time captured. Both as astonishing today as the day they
first hit the streets. It’s time to rediscover The Prodigy.

MARTIN JAMES 2008

It’s plain black and white cover opened up to present had drawn cartoon images of the band members fashioned by future author of The Beach, Alex Garland.

That's an odd bit of trivia.

i also had no idea that voodoo people contained a nirvana sample.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4p1I7o0nY4

timely bump - just saw somsone has put up the band's only UK TV performance ('Everybody In The Place' on DANCE ENERGY): http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Qlq4DXCBgb0

Awesome tune, hilarious clip.

lol the '90s.

Press release I just got through about this spelled it 'Gilted Generation' in the subject header :/

MFtJG is still an awesome album, so dense and paranoid. It's aged much better than what they did before or after, though I love the hardcore era stuff too.

I prefer Experience to Jilted - the latter is more well-constructed and purposeful, but nothing beats the seratonin rush of the early tunes. Jilted is still top-notch, mind.

hey coming to ilm is just like gazing wearily at the pr spam in my inbox now!

New song, surprisingly OK.

NOW
THE WRITING'S ON THE WALL
IT WON'T GO AWAY
IT'S AN OMEN
YOU JUST RUN AN AUTOMATION

(this makes no sense but is still awesome)

figures that it would take a live version 15 years after the fact to make me see any glimmer of worth in "Their Law"

still the worst thing on World's On Fire tho

btw I'm the only person who bought this, right

the live version on the 'Breathe' single was good, and it seems to have been one of their most popular live tracks since MFTJG (but i love the album version anyway)

I thought it was one of their more popular tracks, period (obv I never liked it)

best thing about the new live album is that they pulled out "Weather Experience"!

their first release is best in expanded form and other rereties from before and have some good singles but they pretty much lost me afters.

I really love the new video. The song itslef is better than their last comeback, at least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xB_nKpEkILs

kinda self-parodic by this point

if by "this point" you mean 1998

I was in a nightclub last night where the DJ played Smack My Bitch Up and it felt very awkward.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jan/17/the-prodigy-the-day-is-my-enemy-oasis-blur looooooooooooooooool

The Prodigy: 'we should be as important as Oasis or Blur' looooooooooooooooool

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI

RIP Keith Flint

fucking hell

oh damn RIP

Shit.

49 :(

definetely king of cool in the eyes of 11-year olds mid-nineties.

RIP

Liam confirmed on Twitter it was suicide... RIP, so sad.

That is sad.

Sorry, Instagram, not Twitter, if that matters.

Oh no! RIP.

God fucking damn it. The Fat of the Land was the album I needed to open my mind to a whole lot of electronic music to which I'd been stupidly dismissive before, an important record for me.

Such a fucking shame. Used to play Outer Space and No Good on repeat as a teen

For a lot of people in the UK the Prodigy *was* the sound of being a teenager in the 90s, and the Fat of the Land era in particular was something you felt you outgrew and moved on from very quickly, and it's now comfortably recycled into the wedding disco canon. Difficult to overstate the shock and excitement of seeing Firestarter and Breathe on Top of the Pops and wondering where the hell it was all going to go and Keith was the central image and voice in all of that.

As it turned out it went nowhere much - I got used to dismissing that stuff as largely irrelevant to current dance music but it's also impossible to imagine whole swathes of current music, specifically EDM and everything that sounds like it, developing in quite the same way without it. And the subsequent descent into hamminess doesn't matter either, because I'd always assumed that Keith would end up doing and AC/DC, still churning round the festival circuit doing Firestarter into his 60s, becoming one of those self-parodic acts that resolutely refused to change. Damn.

Matt, completely agree. By the time Firestarter became a hit, I didn't much care for the Prodigy. Too cartoonish. But I could see how one could love the punk/dance combo. Dangerous? Lol no. But Keith was so much fun. Very sad ending. I can understand Liam's anger.

The Prodigy were a huge band for me as a teenager and ...Jilted Generation was very much my gateway into dance music. Matt DC OTM about the shock and now-ness of Firestarter, it felt massive. RIP Keith.

I absolutely loved The Prodigy, from the moment I heard Android I was obsessed with tracking that EP down, then Experience hit and I was along for the ride all the way including Fat Of The Land. They completely dropped off the face of the earth after that, was that Liam's writers block?

I was a teenager when The Fat of the Land came out and its sense of menace bowled me over, as you'd expect. It felt more modern and forward-looking than Marilyn Manson's contemporaneous schlock and Keith was a big part of that, no matter how easy it has become to dismiss them in the interim (cf. Pitchfork's retrospective review). I had a harder time connecting with Music for the Jilted Generation, which genuinely felt like it came from a different era at the time, but those reservations evaporated a few years later.

None of my classmates were into them, which helped fuel the mystique.

I loved Jilted Generation and I guess saw it as a ~mature statement~ after the purer rave fun of Experience, and Firestarter was def a massive cultural event as everyone said, but I also slightly resented the new rockishness and what I saw as forced attempts to be edgy. (Weirdly getting "Their Law" - rock guitars, PWEI collab - on some free NME or Select tape was the thing that made me go and buy Jilted so I don't know what changed!)

It was only rewatching the videos years later - not sure where it's from but there's a good making of Firestarter video on youtube - that I realised just how hilarious and unexpectedly camp Keith's performances were and felt bad for not appreciating the glorious silliness properly at the time.

Anyway. Poor guy.

(There's a BBC obit now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-47442312 )

“They completely dropped off the face of the earth after that” - I remember there was a really long wait for their next single after Fat of the Land. It was “Baby’s got a temper” and it was fantastically bad. Liam tried to write another album on the same style but it didn’t work, and by the time they made a comeback it was too late and the material wasn’t as strong. “Girls” is great for the first two minutes but gets boring after that. I wonder if having to write material for Flint and Maxim to deliver gave Liam a creative push he didn’t have otherwise - the later stuff didn’t utilise them as much.

It’s odd having an icon from the rave era dying. In my mind 1989 was just (counts) 2019... twenty years ago? Longer than ten years. Can’t possibly be longer than twenty years. Next we’ll be crying about those lovable funsters Altern-8. Would anybody miss the Utah Saints?

I wonder if the band will carry on. Most of their classic early tunes were just Liam and whatever sampler he used at the time - “Out of Space”, “No Good”, even “Poison” and “Voodoo People” etc didn’t have Keith doing vocals. But their two most popular hits were dominated by Keith.

Would anybody miss the Utah Saints?

hi!

Oh god Poison was indeed great. One of these bands you never revisit. Well, I don't. Great for when you're a teen. You buy the record, play it and then delve deeper into the dance scene. A great gateway but just that.

surprised to read that all their albums bar the first one debuted at number one on the UK Charts (think that's right). I definitely stopped caring after Fat Of The Land but the first two albums had a profound effect on me.

One of these bands you never revisit.

I was doing a playlist last week for my 30th wedding anniversary and couldn't decide between No Good and Everyone In The Place. Couldn't believe how old those songs were and, of course, how long I'd been married.

Picked No Good incidentally.

I wonder if having to write material for Flint and Maxim to deliver gave Liam a creative push he didn’t have otherwise - the later stuff didn’t utilise them as much.

Maybe not the most key detail at the moment but The Prodigy records from Invaders Must Die onwards actually use a fair bit more of their two frontmen than any prior era - Keith didn’t get a turn on lead vocals until “Firestarter”, and near as I can tell that and “Baby’s Got A Temper” were the only proper verse-chorus verse songs either of them did with the group (as opposed to more catchphrasey rave-MC stuff, which is how they’d be heavily utilized in newer Prodigy material). I guess it speaks to how key Keith and Maxim have been to the overall effect of The Prodigy that it took me a long time to realize that.
Speaking of which, Liam’s obviously and understandably broken up about this but if he and Maxim want to keep having a go at it I’d certainly support them, and I doubt I’m alone in that.

xp also “No Good” is very much the right pick.

I wouldn't call them strictly an entry point, I was already pretty deep into techno and house when The Prodigy came along, they just had the hardest hitting breaks around. But then I was also fully on board with hardcore, schranz, neurofunk, dubstep etc.

(i mean after that, obv)

How were the Prodigy received in the US? Was it only really Fat Of The Land that had a significant commercial/cultural impact? They're a household name in the UK and even if their relevance waned after maybe the fourth album, they'd made enough of a mark on the public conscience to be counted as a legendary British act so to speak

Music For A Jilted Generation remains to my ears one of the most evil-sounding pop records of all time. I guess I was the right age but it was such a contrast from the smilier rave stylings of the first album. Like the point in the night where things take a dark turn, people start looking like ogres and demons and everything's just dripping with grey slimey rave juice. Fat of the Land tried to go one darker but instead ended up sounding a bit comical. I love the Peep Show take-off of that era - 'This is outrageous / This is contagious'

I'm surprised to read the The Fat of the Land went double platinum stateside, because it didn't feel big to me at the time. I see that "Firestarter" made it to #30 on the US singles chart, which sounds about right: a decently big pop song but not a blockbuster. That was their only song that had any impact in the USA iirc.

Fat of the Land was a #1 album stateside, I think

That's right, and double platinum like I said, but the singles didn't hit like that.

breathe and smack my bitch up were all over us modern rock radio in '97

Fat of the Land came out in that weird moment where dance music came above ground in the US for a moment, but the majority of the interest ended up concentrated on acts that were less dancefloor-ready and more easily packaged as vocal hook-enabled commercial jingles, viable as "live" performers, or able to create music videos that held interest.

The Prodigy hit all three of those. FOTL had a rock sensibility and both Keith Flint's vocals and stage presence were instrumental in that appeal. Although he's not in the video, when I reached college in '99 swapping music and videos on the college network had taken off and every single network share had the Firestarter video.

I was laughing at a recent twitter thread asking why ravers in the US in 2019 are so weirdly aggressive. Really, The Prodigy -- and specifically FOTL -- are the dads of the US EDM festival scene.

indeed - MTV was pushing Fatboy Slim & the Chems a lot, but The Prodigy had a lead singer and were a lot more "band-like", plus their image sorta fit in with the Limp Bizkit-style 'alternative punk' look that you saw all the time back then. They hadn't really figured out how to deal with groups that didn't have a 'frontman' so it's not a surprise that The Prodigy were the ambassadors of "electronica"

oh fuck :(

RIP

The Prodigy was really a big deal in the U.S., I remember when Firestarter dropped on the radio it really *did* sound a lot different and people were immediately hooked by that track. It was released really far in advance of the album, so it built up this huge level of anticipation that the next great band was about to hit. I bought the CD almost immediately upon its release and while it wasn't really a total classic for me, it did hook me and get me interested in digging into this "electronica" thing. I think the deal with these guys and Keith Flint was they sounded huge and absurd and fun, in a year when the biggest single was Candle in the Wind '97.

I had just hopped on a British Airways flight to London the weekend that The Fat of the Land topped the American chart. During the month I spent in the United Kingdom, I listened to the BBC several times, during which "Smack My Bitch Up" was ubiquitous or seemed so. I heard it on car radios as I walked from my flat in Russell Square to one of the many bookshops on Tottenham Court Road. When I returned to the States, "Firestarter" and "Breathe" were all over modern/alternative radio. In many ways they augured the macho turn that this chart would take in the late Clinton years. But I still love those singles.

It came out the summer before I went to university, it was pretty much the only thing we played in the car on the first holiday I ever went on with my friends. I think I've only ever owned it on a shitty copied cassette and streaming it now I'm amazed to discover it actually has bass.

Serial Thrilla is still rubbish, Mindfields is pretty good though.

Prodigy headlined the last Lollapalooza tour in '97

https://www.lollapalooza.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Lolla97.jpg

rip.

really enjoyed the show i attended in 1998, the smack my bitch up tour. they were supported by foo fighters, so it was a bit of a dream line-up for me at 14.

weird role to have in a group, to be a frontman but only do vocals on a few songs.

actually it would've been 1997 and i was 13

breathe and smack my bitch up were all over us modern rock radio in '97

― call all destroyer, Monday, March 4, 2019 9:02 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

mtv too

when i was a kid i didn't understand and was scared of them but "breathe" was still the coolest thing i'd ever heard

I had a total brainfart, the ubiquitous video on college computer network shares was "smack my bitch up" obviously

firestarter was probably in there, but much further down the list

Unexpected and touching tribute from James Blunt of all people.

At the Q Awards years ago, when @NoelGallagher was saying he was leaving Ibiza because I’d moved there, and @DamonAlbarn refused to be in the same picture as me, and @PaulWellerHQ was saying he’d rather eat his own shit than work with me, Keith Flint came over, gave me a hug, and

— James Blunt (@JamesBlunt) March 4, 2019

(2nd part)

said how thrilled he was for my success.

Keith, I only met you once, but I shed a tear at the news of your death. In our business, there are no prizes for being kind, but if there was, that Grammy would be yours.

— James Blunt (@JamesBlunt) March 4, 2019

Using the death of someone who was kind to you once to offload a bunch of pent-up grudges you've held for years is an odd approach to paying tribute to someone. Takes all sorts, I suppose. That last sentence is premium Blunt cheese, too. Quality.

I like that story. Sounds like it was Noel, Damon, Paul, and the rest with the grudges! Good on Keith for showing kindness to an "easy target", if you will.

And yeah, this news gutted me.

Blunt does come across as surprisingly self-aware and self-mocking on Twitter, so I really doubt he's doing any more than shrugging at his open-mic-night-guy-meets-Westlife reputation than airing a grudge here

when i was a kid i didn't understand and was scared of them but "breathe" was still the coolest thing i'd ever heard

― jolene club remix (BradNelson), Monday, March 4, 2019 12:37 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was like 20 at the time but same

Sensing that slow burn arc of the Prodigy going from hearing "Charly" randomly in 91/92 to where it crested in 97 here was really kinda amazing.

Show I most regret missing because of the insanity of the context -- the Moby/Prodigy tour in early 1993 in Orange County, when they played a long-standing rock/country venue in South County. That had seats and tables. I still wonder what the fuck that was like.

Here's the one contemporary documentation of that show I know of:

http://articles.latimes.com/1993-01-14/news/ol-1377_1_techno-music

Pretty nice piece by our own somewhat erstwhile AlexinNY:
https://vassifer.blogs.com/alexinnyc/2019/03/goodbye-to-keith-flint.html

It seems as easy to imagine a Prodigy Moby bill in 93 it seems hard to imagine one in 97.

“They completely dropped off the face of the earth after that” - I remember there was a really long wait for their next single after Fat of the Land. It was “Baby’s got a temper” and it was fantastically bad.

the Fat Of The Land breakthrough was just so big (over a year after the huge Firestarter breakthrough,& three years after the Jilted etc etc), and so protracted in a still physical-media-dominant world, that they just spent two years touring bigger and bigger venues. Once they stopped, Howlett supposedly spent... six months? fiddling and nitpicking his Breezeblock mix into The Dirtchamber Sessions, before the whole enterprise collapsed exhausted and Leeroy sloped off.

Baby's Got A Temper sounded nakedly desperate at the time (trying to generate a Prodigy single by sampling Firestarter over a song about Rohypnol by Keith's rock band?), but the public, the band and Flint all seemed mutually happy to pretend it never happened ASAP.

FOTL-era Prodge as precursor to '10s EDM is OTM, except instead of having a goon leap around having fun and shouting, the kids had to latch onto the bloke at the back engaging in online slagging matches on edgelord-brostep.com/forum for their audience identification. What I'm saying, I think, is that for want of a few more Keith Flints, we could be without Comicsgate and Proud Boys today.

The Prodigy as an influence on dubstep yeah thats obvious but I don’t hear a lot of that aggression and menace (or breakbeats for that matter) in David Guetta of Aviici. Although that maybe has more to do with the uselessness of “EDM” as a genre name.

I’d say contemporary stadium house acts like Faithless were much more of a precursor to that.

All of their albums have gone to number 1 in the UK! Even the really shit ones! By the time that 2004 album came out they were completely anachronistic, but by 2009 they sort of made sense again. That was after two or three years of blog house and nu-rave and various indie bands checking them as a formative influence etc. I remember Invaders Must Die being half-decent in places, but the one from last year was awful and they felt like dinosaurs.

At some point, probably pre-97 in all honesty, it felt like their connection to dance music was severed. As opposed to, say, the Chemical Brothers, who even at their most indie-friendly always felt like they'd retained a feel for club culture, would put out maximalist bangers in between albums etc.

I think of Faithless as the Prodigy of trance, not as stadium house

Faithless, like Guetta & co fall between house and trance in a similar way.

I mean Rollo & Bliss were house producers first, taking in some elements from trance like those big buildups, just like Guetta, Axwell/Ingrosso, Aviici, Afrojack, all the EDM guys, it’s a pretty straight line through time.

Shit

https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/53648551_10155821222102251_8165130350394081280_n.jpg?_nc_cat=107&_nc_ht=scontent-lhr3-1.xx&oh=8d572e052f065576223cdf1b690d67e1&oe=5CDD10EB

aww, shit

Siegbran, I think that's a relatively narrow EDM definition?

I might be liberally clumping in the post-"dubstep" stuff under EDM, but my understanding (and limited experience) is that a large portion of the acts at modern EDM festivals is the drop-heavy rippling bass stuff. Which is more Prodigy-indebted, but much less radio friendly.

Half of the stuff thrown into dj sets by a couple edm acts that were playing at a side stage at a festival I was at last year were playing 90% stuff that sounded like post-Skrillex with rap vocals tossed in.

Hmm yeah that goes to show that EDM as a tag isn't very useful in discussing this stuff (in the wider definition even Moroder and the Pet Shop Boys fall under it), I was indeed more referring to the narrower "country/pop singer dropping inspirational lyrics over a huge anthemic build/drop" EDM, but yeah that (post)dubstep stuff is of course totally indebted to The Prodigy.

country/pop singer dropping inspirational lyrics over a huge anthemic build/drop

Based on admittedly anecdotal evidence, EDM's definition has narrowed down over the years, and this appears to be its prevalent meaning nowadays. I might be wrong, though.

my definition is "stuff that plays at events like Electric Daisy Carnival that isn't a legacy act or dance genre that I'd like (that is probably playing a small side stage for old people)"

The bit about the 5k is especially sad. I haven't been touched by serious depression or suicidal thoughts. I just know that for me, exercise is such a life-affirming activity.

I don't really know anything about Keith or the Prodigy, but there's been such an outpouring of grief from so many people I wouldn't have expected a connection. I'm sorry for all you who were fans.

that photo of keith running checks out - looks like he only started doing parkrun just a couple of weeks ago

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/results/athleteresultshistory/?athleteNumber=5457329

not bad times either for someone just starting out

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7800/46392084864_01710c36f3_c.jpg

The bit about the 5k is especially sad. I haven't been touched by serious depression or suicidal thoughts. I just know that for me, exercise is such a life-affirming activity.

Yeah, I've been doing parkrun for just over two years and personally know a couple of people who are in a much better place mentally since they started doing it. There's usually such a friendly community around the events too.

I'm listening to 'No Tourists'. It's... yeah, it sounds like what you'd expect it to sound like. But will anyone here vouch for post FOTL Prodigy?

Yes.

Yes but not in large quantities.

I'm not sure I'd particularly vouch for FoTL.

"Funky Shit" and "Serial Thrilla" might be the worst things they've ever recorded

The last track with the woman from Republica is rubbish as well.

Breathe and Firestarter haven't aged massively well. Smack My Bitch Up still bangs though.

And the Crispy Mills one still sounds surprisingly decent.

FOTL is a great EP ("Smack My Bitch Up", "Diesel Power", "Mindfields", "Narayan", "Climbatize") with some decent filler ("Firestarter", "Breathe") and some total horseshit (the rest, although "Fuel My Fire" is at least bad in an entertaining way)

That's solidly OTM.

Can't remember Climbatize though!

The instrumental towards the end.

I quite like Naryan. Climbatize is good in a "let's do Weather Experience again" way. The two lead singles are great but I never need to hear then again. Don't care much for the rest really.

"Diesel Power" rules

wow, i completely forgot "Fuel My Fire" existed... in my head it sounds pretty good.... but i think this might be an album where glancing at the tracklist and thinking about the hooks it seems like an all-killer-no-filler album, but i'm actually forgetting some exhausting digressions because WOW it's 56 minutes long?!

“Serial Thrilla” is 200% enervating

Yeah it’s too long for such a monochromatic album, but drop Firestarter (I never need to hear that ever again), Funky Shit and Fuel My Fire and you’re done.

"Smack My Bitch Up" is the single I've really tired of. "Breathe" got the most play on the alternative station I listened to in the 90s but I never hear it anymore and enjoy it nowadays. "Mindfields" and "Narayan" quietly the best tracks on the album

yeah now that you mention it, "Breathe" has not really been super overplayed, for how big it was that year. i don't think any of the more "electronica" side of 90s alt rock has crossed over to the "alt rock is now classic rock" thing. or even the relevant xm genre stations.

DJP, do a best prodigy tracks from 1998 onward

1. Girls (Rex The Dog Remix)

sic otm

Yeah that one is excellent. My DJ trick at the time was to mix the acappella from Breathe'n'Stop over it

The beat drop on Narayan in incredible.

Spitfire (05 Version), Girls, Take Me To The Hospital, Warrior's Dance, The Day Is My Enemy (Liam Howlett Remix), Timebomb Zone that's my other picks.

I've listened to so much Prodge in the last 24 hrs. Strange to listen to No Tourists and then go straight back to Experience.
There was definitely a point in their career where they stopped caring about coming up with new ideas and decided to keep using the same template - even down to the drum/break sounds Liam uses from Invaders onwards.

I'm definitely someone who got off after hearing FOTL, but I've heard Always Outnumbered and Invaders a few times out in the wild. Gonna give Always Outnumbered a spin now - my guess is that it's going to be marginally more listenable than FOTL at this point.

Also, the Sub Focus remix of Smack My Bitch Up (from 2005) goes in hard.

All these years later mind a bit blown by Jeff Mills having a credit on 'Warriors Dance' because of the 'Take Me Away' sample. I never realised he was part of Final Cut.

best post-98 Prodigy: excluding the Dirtchamber mix, Howlett's own remix of You Will Be Under My Wheels

Breezeblock mix was ‘98 so that counts imo

forgot about this (pre-98 but still great)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lEtgbT8v4k

Man, Climbatize is easily one of the best tracks on FOTL. Serial Thrilla is the worst.

I had a listen to 3 Kilos off of Jilted earlier - so good, and nothing like how they usually sound. They were great at doing those more chilled, funky tracks and it's strange they didn't do more of them

DJP, do a best prodigy tracks from 1998 onward

off the top of my head without relistening and without digging into remixes (because tbh I haven't heard a bunch of them yet, I've mostly just rattled around the albums)

Girls
Get Up Get Off
Hotride
You'll Be Under My Wheels
Omen
Take Me To The Hospital
Warrior's Dance
World's On Fire
The Day Is My Enemy
(there was another track off of The Day Is My Enemy that I REALLY liked but of course I can't remember it now)

I don't know No Tourists well enough to pick any tracks off of it

Cheers, I've whacked those into a playlist with a couple of No Tourists tracks

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6EVnNNVYCizndzOBXdMn7c?si=8fa33b4a3b034dfc

btw I left Stand Up off my list; really Invaders Must Die is a great album, a lot better overall than Fat Of The Land

oh also Wake Up Call goes pretty hard

i love the prodigy vs dubstep era.
the productions levels finally met their needs.
the 2nd cd that came with the special edition of 'invaders must die', proved the point for me.
for all the classics, i have always chosen the recent material when in the mood purely cos of the insane sonics.
and 'no tourists' is so much fun.
even though it totally sonically references their history (pretty sure that liam acknowledged this at the time of its release).

I agree, individually these newer songs are all pretty impressive sound-wise, but over a whole album it gets really hard to listen to. Then again, I’m too old.

yeah, cos of this thread just listened to 'no tourists' again, and absolutely love it.
a definite case of 'all killer no filler'.
the fact it's a short album means you don't get time to become bored.
yeah, its a retread of well worn prodigy tropes, but it totally works for me.

"firestarter" is still the one i remember after all these years because of that video. it still sounds amazing. i should probably check out more of what they did at some point. i'm going to b2b "born slippy nuxx" and "firestarter" after a charli xcx track for the youngsters at the clurb tomorrow (it's a 90s night).

I'd go with Everybody in the place for a 90s night

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WY87o9IZXWg

Oh man map, at one point The Prodify where the pinnacle of breakbeat; everything they did was 100% amazing and “Firestarter” was the point where the cracks started to show. If you’re not up on their earlier stuff I would be very happy to babble incessantly about it with you

after djp has preached the early stuff I'm a big apologist for the later stuff, esp always outnumbered, which I've been listening to all summer, perfect summer jams

Most of the tracks off of Jilted forever. Drop Voodoo People or Poison b2b with Born Slippy!

Totally throwing on some stuff from this era and the Chemical Brothers remix of Voodoo People is so damn good

So many lovely little melodies on Experience

i like how unhinged and dangerous "firestarter" sounds, mainly because of keith's performance. (shit i did not realize that he died of suicide in 2019 :( god that sucks). i think i've tried with the earlier stuff but it didn't scratch the same itch. i need keith being an absolute fucking maniac.

My boring-but-important opinion is that "No Good (Start The Dance)" is their pinnacle in the sense that it takes Howlett's capacity for physically menacing production to its absolute zenith while having absolutely no heavy-handed signifiers of menace whatsoever.

"Poison" is fine, but in retrospect it's the start of the music's slow brain rot (though to be clear "Firestarter" and "Smack My..." and one or two others are absolute bangers.

The Firestarter episode of 60 Songs That Explain the 90's is one of the best in that series too.

I will admit, while there's some absolute duds on Fat of the Land, the production quality Howlett was able to pull off was pretty damn next level compared to the previous records.

It certainly sounds great

"no good (start the dance)" is great, what a video.

at one point The Prodify where the pinnacle of breakbeat; everything they did was 100% amazing and “Firestarter” was the point where the cracks started to show.

it's funny that jilted was so exciting when it came out due to the direction they were taking but then the same direction killed the joy you can hear in experience and to some extent in jilted.

"no good (start the dance)" is great, what a video.

― he/him hoo-hah (map), Thursday, September 5, 2024 11:17 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah I can't think of the song without the video clip appearing in my head, it really captures that vibe of rave hedonism transmuting into something deeply ominous

One secret quality of "No Good" and "Voodoo People" in particular is how rhythmically dense they are, simultaneously running along on a 4x4 kick and palsied breakbeats - it's like they can never decide whether they want to be pop songs or a Jeff Mills DJ set

First two albums are without a single flaw. Third one I sometimes bow to the consensus on the two Keith album tracks but otherwise...

And then there's the two 00s albums and that makes five I have listened to endlessly over the years. I'm practically required by law to like the 00s albums of any and all 90s dance giants and so it proves. The 10s albums are the ones that are actually choppy.

Unrelated but I really want to go to a 90s night. I'm such a stranger to club nights and I'm curious what they're like and what I'd be like.

Anyway, all that said, Experience is still The One - for rave in LP form full stop. Especially with the 2001 bonus disc.

My friend was playing us a mix he'd made during some downtime at a festival and "Your Love" came on and maaaaan that is a special tune. Experience still holds up so incredibly well I think