The Prodigy Go Punk

[Simon]

The Prodigy Go Punk

Breakbeat hardcore heroes turned electro-rock giants The Prodigy are definitely releasing their long-awaited new album this year, with a distinct new musical direction, Prodigy mainman Liam Howlett revealed this week.

“The tracks I've done sound like me, they sound like The Prodigy, but they kind of have... they are punk in attitude,” the multi-millionaire songwriter told fan site Nekozine.co.uk.

“The music is well on its way, tracks are finished and we've got our deadline now and that's the one we're going to deliver on,” he added.

Howlett’s comments marked a change in attitude from when the band promoted their last new single Baby’s Got a Temper in the summer of 2002, when he launched an angry attack on the rock scene.

“I just think the Nu Metal scene’s a load of guys in costume with spiky hair playing punk,’ he told Mixmag.

http://www.nekozine.co.uk/int.html

Jonty Skrufff (Skrufff.com)

[JOEYd]

woah

interesting....

[decoy]

awesome, now if they would be kind enough to realease it.......

[KittyBleu]

These guys rawk...I got to see them at HFStival a while back and they put on an awesome show...always gets my booty movin'... :D ..can't wait to hear the new stuff...but will have to wait...and wait...

[decoy]

Originally posted by KittyBleu
These guys rawk...I got to see them at HFStival a while back and they put on an awesome show...always gets my booty movin'... :D ..can't wait to hear the new stuff...but will have to wait...and wait...

I wanted to go to that one so bad, I heard the ripped it up, but I had to work I think. I saw the Chemical Brothers though, woah, that was unbelieveable.


Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, "old school" prodigy rules. :raveon:

[KittyBleu]

:puppydog: ....you saw the Chemical Brothers...? lucky you....lucky you....

[housecat]

Originally posted by decoy

Also, I've said it before and I'll say it again, "old school" prodigy rules. :raveon:
Most DEF. This sounds very interesting I wanna hear this!!!

[the sex molesters]

i love the prodigy. yay

[flasherred]

Smack my BiTch uP

[RevisionC]

Originally posted by KittyBleu
These guys rawk...I got to see them at HFStival a while back and they put on an awesome show...always gets my booty movin'... :D ..can't wait to hear the new stuff...but will have to wait...and wait...


That was such a sweet sweet set......most defiantly.

Now if only they would release the new stuff.

[Charran]

Sounds like I have to get that CD when it gets released!

[EurotrashEve]

I got Dirt chamber Vol. 1- of their new stuff like in 2000
I think if they waited until end of 2002 early 2003 to release that album it would have done better sale wise. B/c alot of ppl didn't even know about that one...it was basically Liams experimentation with breaks old and new and mixing it with stuff like Jane's addiction.The more I listen to it, it was released too ahead of it's time like that one kraftwerk album...if it is anything like Dirt chamber Vol. 1 , I believe it will do extremely well.

[decoy]

If you like the Dirtchamber sessions, check out "Brothers gonna work it out" by the chemical brothers. It's basically the same premise, take old songs and make a collage out of them. there is only like 4 of 5 tracks on the cd because each track is a collage of a bunch of different songs. good times :thumbsup:

[korbendallas]

I http://dungpow.com/smilies/090.gif prodigy. cant wait for there new rekkid.

[ravetildawn]

i'm a fiyastata, a wicked fiyastata.

[LaZyCrZy]

Originally posted by decoy
If you like the Dirtchamber sessions, check out "Brothers gonna work it out" by the chemical brothers. It's basically the same premise, take old songs and make a collage out of them. there is only like 4 of 5 tracks on the cd because each track is a collage of a bunch of different songs. good times :thumbsup:

ohhh that chem bros cd was awesome... but i lost it :( dirtchambers was interesting cd...

Baby's Got a Temper was a horrible Prodigy song IMO

[EurotrashEve]

I really like Prodigy's "Music for the Jilted Generation"CD ALOT
I've had the record/cd for years......I think they are bringing alot of old songs back..like I believe they are using one of the songs off that album for "torque" b/c that cd is really high NRG, I love it..

[zartan]

prodigy have always been punk IMO.

anyone ever notice that the bass line for "everybody in the place" (i think that's it - i don't have it on this computer to verify) is *exactly* anarchy in the UK?

they were pretty punkass live in 1992 too. if you think spitting on people is punk, which i do.

[EurotrashEve]

I am hoping they come to DC when they tour..b/c they are awesome live. I wonder if it wil be kool keith, liam howlett and Keith flint still...if they added anyone to the mix?

[housecat]

Originally posted by zartan74
prodigy have always been punk IMO.

Agreed.. I think they have always been pretty damn badass IMO.

I used to have a wicked crush on Liam rawwwwwwwwwwr. :yummy:

[korbendallas]

Originally posted by ravetildawn
i'm a fiyastata, a wicked fiyastata.

hahahaha :haha:

[LaZyCrZy]

Music for the Jilted Generation was just awesome

Voodoo People
Poison
One Love
No Good

great tracks

[zartan]

the prodigy experience was hte first/only EDM music i had for a long time after this british chick i was dating in college got me to go raving for a bit. she knew them from raving in the UK. and damn was she ever punk. piercings OMFG.

[korbendallas]

"I got the poison...I got the remedy...." loved that song!

[EurotrashEve]

you too?..yeah.
They spit on their audience at WHFS'tival ...they are really high NRG in meaning they are hyperactive on stage they jump around they are everywhere on that stage...
My dad went to that WHfs'tival b/c he wanted to see deborah harrie of blondie and bjork amongst others while being out of mind out of body...then he saw the prodigy crowd and was like WTF?...cuz there was this guy w/ a dead frog hanging by a chain on his neck and that was keith flint...my dad was like : dude I want to be that guy with two mowhawks"nohawks "on the side of my head... my friends and I spotted my dad in the mosh pit formed during their set..meanwhile me & my friends were up by the right side of the stage dancing our asses off.

[housecat]

SOOOOO going home and digging through my cassettes.

:lessthanthree: Prodigy

[EurotrashEve]

Kool keith had a fucking kilt on and a mouth full of silver or platimum and vampire canines... and was waving a cane up in the air too

[zartan]

when i saw them at a rave in the capital auto auction building they were all wearing white body suits and masks flourescing paint and jumping around like MAD. it was insane.

[EurotrashEve]

I want to see them booked

[korbendallas]

I always liked that you only had to be a dancer to be considered part of the group :D

[A.J. Inx]

:yes:

[Bioteknik]

Originally posted by zartan74
the prodigy experience was hte first/only EDM music i had for a long time after this british chick i was dating in college got me to go raving for a bit. she knew them from raving in the UK. and damn was she ever punk. piercings OMFG.

first edm cd for me too.. too bad it hasn't influenced your taste in edm more sucka!!

[Bioteknik]

here's another recent article talking about how their new material is kinda taking it back to the old school ways like in experience..

Liam Howlett of Prodigy explains why Reason, to him, is the best thing since
sliced bread.

by Fredrik Hagglund

Anyone who wasn't in a deep coma all through the 1990's would be hard pressed not to remember Essex based dance outfit The Prodigy. They extracted the pure essence of the rave scene, infused it with hefty doses of punk, funk & skunk, wrapped it up and smuggled this package of unbridled club energy into your living room in the guise of chart smashers like Out of Space, Poison, Firestarter, Breathe and Smack My Bitch Up. But where are
they now? As it turns out, they're already on the approach for your speaker membranes at 300 mph, dead set on making all the world's decibel meters blow their fuses once more.

Rumblings from the Dirtchamber

We tune in as Liam Howlett, the sonic sculptor of the band, is busy crafting the fourth Prodigy album in the depths of his studio dwelling The Dirtchamber. It has indeed been a while since we last heard from them; 1997 saw the release of The Fat of the Land, but other than the orphan single Baby's Got a Temper - released in the summer of 2002 - Prodigy have been
perplexingly quiet.

A six year hiatus, why?
- Well it wasn't a conscious decision or a plan, really; it just happened. We knew there would be downtime after The Fat of the Land - we felt we had reached the pinnacle of what Prodigy was, and I myself had my mind set on taking a couple of years off. And then time just flew by, know what I mean? About 2 years ago I started working again, but soon realized I needed to
shift myself out of the formula I'd gotten into from working in the same environment all the time. I'd written everything in Cubase from 1993 onwards, with a bunch of hardware synths and Akai samplers as my main setup. I sat down and I thought, "well... this is just so boring. How can I ever get inspired doing the same old thing? How am I gonna write a fresh, inspired album? I'm not enjoying it, it's not going anywhere, I hate my studio, I hate all the equipment in it." For a man with a hardware gear list the size of a small town phone directory, that's a lot of equipment to hate. Liam's winding road through the world of music making is one which many of his generation can relate to; he started out with a simple 4-track portastudio and turntables in the 1980' s, soon got into synthesizers, and eventually found himself using a Roland
W-30 workstation with a whopping 16 seconds worth of sampling time. The entire first album, The Prodigy Experience, was created on just this one keyboard. As the royalties started rolling in, so did the gear - and soon enough Liam found himself immersed in a machine park with enough electronics to fill a space cruiser. But, as anyone who's been-there-done-that will know, that can be more of a curse than a blessing.

What got you back on track again?
- I bought myself a laptop, which completely reanimated my creative process because I was able to write anywhere I went. At one point someone told me to check out this program
Reason, "it's really back to basics, you should check it out just for fun, you know?" So I did - I started out just writing beats on it and approached it in a sort of recreational sense, like you would a
computer game. Then I'd go off somewhere like Scotland or New York and I'd take my laptop with me, with all my samples on the hard drive... and then it all just started happening. Reason was just like... it totally refreshed me, it was just amazing. It was like going back to how it was in the beginning. All of a sudden I was writing two or three songs a week, just messing around
and having a laff again. I started something with it and got it rocking in ten minutes. That took a lot of pressure off of me. So, to summarize: What got me back on track was A) the laptop, and a program that let me feel I' ve gone back and taken all the complication out of writing music.

A lot of people feel that way; Reason is like a lifesaver for the bored gearhead musician. You? - Yeah, I couldn't live without it. If Reason hadn't come along I would probably still be in my studio, depressed, going "aww bloody 'ell, don't know what I'm gonna do", you know? I don't want to pat Propellerhead on the
back too much, but... Reason has literally changed my life, getting me back in the studio and enjoying it all again. It's taken the monotony out of music making and put it into a format where music should be these days - no big deal, just something that should be fun to do. Creation is always painful, but this is the least painful way I know of.

What do you think it was in the old days that ultimately sucked the life out of creativity? - It was all so time consuming back then, we were all bogged down in cumbersome processes. I'm not very technical - I come from a hip hop sort of cut-and-paste background and I'm not this big studio guy, it's just all in
my head. The technology available now frees the mind in the creative sense; I'm able to think about the actual song a lot more, rather than just going "it's gonna take me an hour to do this or that". Music for me these days is quite punk rock, it's very DIY, very throwaway. I know I'm not creating something that's gonna be around forever. For me and for Prodigy it's all
about the quick punch in the face, you know?

So, Reason is pretty much the meat of the sound on the new album? - Literally everything you'll hear on the new album has been written on Reason. Everything starts there. Eventually we get to a stage where the song is written, and then we - that's my producer Neil McClennan and I - move it into 'Tools where we finish off everything, and that works great since Reason integrates with ProTools really well. Everything that comes out of
Reason sounds really good, it's got this sound, I think - a kind of
certain... everything sounds like it "locks in" really good, you know? And that sound we got out of Reason is something that we now and again had to go back to Reason to duplicate; sometimes we'd do a thing in ProTools and it just didn't rock it like Reason did, so we'd take it out of ProTools and try
to duplicate it in Reason instead.

What are your favorite Reason devices?
- That would have to be the drum machine and the Dr. REX. I use the REX player all over the place and I just love the way you can mess around with a loop, and I love the way you can sync the LFO to tempo and route it to the filter, we use that on the album a lot. As for the effects, the Scream 4 unit is just the best thing for the type of music I'm writing. Definitely the high point of version 2.5 for me. The tape distortion is very good for
bass, to give it the edge, it's warm...

What, specifically, don't you use Reason for?
- When it comes to bass sounds, I'm pure analog and I don't use soft synths for bass at all. There's just no substitute for analog. Instead, I'll take an Oberheim, Moog, Korg MS-20 or something, sample a sequence of it playing, rex it up and then bring that back in Reason and lock it in there. I do occasionally use the softsynths to put melodies down - I'd say maybe 50% of
the synths, the top line and high end stuff, is Reason. I can't as of yet use it for everything - obviously you can't record vocals into it - but ultimately, what Reason does have by way of limitations is also one of its strong points. It forces your imagination to be more on the board, you have to dig it out of your head rather than just going "well, I just can't do that in there". I never saw it that way, I mean if something you want to do is completely off limits then just use another program, no big deal.
Liam has a wish list for things he'd like to see in future versions of
Reason. One would be the ability to automap non-tonal samples to individual key zones in the NN-XT, for creating drum maps on the fly.

- My end note on Reason is, it's got this humour about it, it's like - when somebody showed it to me the first time and said "you can keep on building the rack up..." I was all, "what rack, what're you on about?" I couldn't believe it, it was just such a simple and genius idea. It's so obvious now, isn't it? Love it.

The new Prodigy album "Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned" is slated for a
spring/summer 2004 release.

[zartan]

damn chris i have good taste in EDM as you may have noted from my attendance at numerous dnb and other nonhouse events.

i don't just listen to that sanborn crap ;)

[Bioteknik]

yeah i remember seeing you at a 5 dnb sessions and others... i just had to tease you since you seem to have house on the brain more often than not.

[Matt Sanborn]

hey fuck both of you