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! @# ! @# !

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