'We should be as important as Oasis or Blur'

January 17, 2015 7:30 AM

The Prodigy have a new album, The Day Is My Enemy, out soon. Interview in the Guardian. Nasty

Charly
Everybody In The Place
Fire / Jerico
Out Of Space
Wind It Up (Rewound)
One Love
No Good (Start The Dance)
Voodoo People
Poison
Firestarter
Breathe
Smack My Bitch Up
Bady's Got A Temper
Girls
Hotride
Spitfire
Invaders Must Die
Omen
Warriors Dance
Take Me To The Hospital

Previously Previouser

posted by fearfulsymmetry (41 comments total)

I can't believe their music and videos are as fresh and great as ever.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 7:39 AM on January 17, 2015

I can't believe their music and videos are as fresh and great as ever.

Harsh but fair.
posted by mhoye at 7:57 AM on January 17, 2015 [20 favorites]

We should be as important as Oasis or Blur

Well, they're quite right, but I thought they already were considered so, to be honest.
posted by Brockles at 8:14 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Back in the late '90s when I still ran, Prodigy was by far the best running music. I had a minidisc player with Firestarter and Breathe on an extended loop. The beats are insane.

I wish I could still run, but my knees are trashed.
posted by Sphinx at 8:27 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

They weren't seen as significant, because they were dance music (i.e., not proper music but something that kids with fluorescent dreadlocks neck pills to be able to appreciate) whereas Blur and Oasis were not only Rock, but prefabricated Heritage Rock, oozing with vintage Authenticity.
posted by acb at 8:31 AM on January 17, 2015 [9 favorites]

The last Prodigy album I heard was The Fat Of The Land. My impression was that it was a lot like Public Enemy's Yo! Bum Rush The Show, only with less politics, more electronics, and the raps cut down to fit into the attention span of a raver off their bonce on pills.
posted by acb at 8:34 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

On the YouTube video for Firestarter, there was a link for a "Firestarter vest". Curious, I clicked on it and it took me to The Prodigy's website where I could click on another link to make the purchase.

Punk as fuck!
posted by Slothrup at 8:36 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

acd, did you ever hear Experience Expanded? Because it is exactly what you described turned up to 13 and I still love it.
posted by byanyothername at 8:53 AM on January 17, 2015

Seems like the same washed out drum loops/snared meaningless vocal/wannabe House/with a few added crunchy bits as ever. It's unintelligent dance music with a few elements borrowed from Industrial and Punk, not often what I'm looking for. My general party experience with the Prodigy is they just feel like they're trying a bit too hard and that gets reflected on the DJ as desperation. To each her own though, not knocking anyone for being in to them. Maybe I've never had quite the right drugs.
posted by Locobot at 9:41 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

If anyone has a copy of Unmen (the electronica duo from the 90's) Music in Motion if you could hit me up on MeMail I would appreciate it.
posted by Nevin at 10:08 AM on January 17, 2015

Youtube user AntonisThe has quite a nice collection of prodigy stuff, including less-often-seen things. (Note, that youtube page has, as a featured vid, a non-prodigy song which I find pretty amusing.)
posted by maxwelton at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

wannabe House

Can you explain this, or provide an example of "genuine house"? Not critical, actually curious. I (sadly) did not spend my youth high on E and bouncing my considerable bounce at raves and what-not and would like some insight.
posted by maxwelton at 10:24 AM on January 17, 2015

I hate this band with a powerful hate. Same drum machine posturing bullshit over and over and over, and ooooooo aren't they scary and alt and rad and....yeah, hate them.
posted by vrakatar at 10:24 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Drum machine posturing? Are you against drum machines in general, or specifically how The Prodigy uses them? Anyway, at least some of their live shows include a live drummer (previously).

As I was the one who gushed about The Prodigy previously, I'm clearly a fan, and this new track sounds promising. The urban fox hunting reminded me of Dizzee Rascal's video for "Sirens", though the sound of "Nasty" is closer to the Chase & Status Remix of "Sirens."
posted by filthy light thief at 10:36 AM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

At one point, he [Keith] starts talking about the Essex pub he’s bought: “We’ve got an open fire, and I’ve got about 57 quid in a pint pot above it because every time I go and light it, the Firestarter jokes come out. I’m like, that’s very funny, you owe me a pound. So I’ve got £57 going to charity.”
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 10:40 AM on January 17, 2015 [8 favorites]

It's hard to believe now, after years of this awful punk-lite posturing, but hearing The Prodigy of Experience and (to a lesser degree) Jilted Generation really did feel revolutionary at the time. In the UK we'd had something of an acid house moment in the pop charts, and then rave (now what we'd call breakbeat hardcore) was massive on tapes, pirate radio and the like, but a lot of this type of music was technically completely incompetent - all out of tune and discordant - as kids with a ton of enthusiasm but no understanding of what was in key or in time, just threw stuff together on a sampler and hoped for the best (hey I love this genre, but it's surprising how much truly amateurish crap made it to vinyl). The fact that Liam made these intricately layered, deeply melodic tracks using nothing more than one or two 12bit sampling keyboards that used step time sequencing on a tiny LCD screen, and made them feel important, emotive, cutting new beats rather than using sampled loops, creating new melodies rather than just nicking bits of old house tracks, well, like I said, it really was something. Check out an earlier track like Weather Experience for the Prodigy that we fell in love with - yeah, that's the signature breakbeat all right, but it's a deep, blissed out groove with one of the all time great rave string parts.

Ironically, Firestarter felt fresh as anything at the time, but little did we know that that would set their sound for the next two decades.
posted by iivix at 10:55 AM on January 17, 2015 [16 favorites]

I guess if basically (with a few tweaks here and there) the same formula that they were using in 1997 (when most of this year's high school seniors were born) is "punk," edgy, risky, and spontaneous, then yeah, The Prodigy are on the job. I love most 90s EDM, so I'm not necessarily griping, but ...... I'm also around the same age as the blokes in The Prodigy. Music and life move on. I just don't think their whining that nothing is edgy anymore in music is borne out by the evidence. That's what almost everyone who's older says. And it's a huge overgeneralization. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean it's not edgy. Just the opposite, actually.

I quite like the work of whoever they've hired to do their new videos, though.
posted by blucevalo at 11:00 AM on January 17, 2015

Your favorite band is unimportant
posted by thelonius at 11:20 AM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I still think "Breathe" is an amazing, powerful, claustrophobic, meanacing rush to listen to and I can't help snarling when I hear it, but on the other hand I never really forgave them for "Smack My Bitch Up".

Liam has more genius in his little finger than Noel Gallagher has in his whole body, but Keith always comes across as a tosser.

In short I contain multitudes. But they are definitely more important than Oasis so I'm happy to back them 100% on that.
posted by billiebee at 11:25 AM on January 17, 2015 [4 favorites]

If they wanted to be remembered they probably shouldn't have made disposable electronic twaddle.
posted by entropicamericana at 11:27 AM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

Prodigy were a huge part of my music collection while in college and I'm typical an indie rock kind of guy. In short, I like this post.
posted by arcticseal at 11:59 AM on January 17, 2015

I discovered Prodigy when I was twelve and my Dad subscribed to huH Magazine, which came with a monthly sampler cd that he would give me when he was done with. One month they had an issue devoted to "electronica" and "Voodoo People" was my favorite song and Prodigy was soon my favorite band(?) and Music for the Jilted Generation was soon my favorite album. The Prodigy were the perfect bridge between the two late night radio shows I would sneak out of bed to listen to: an industrial show on Q101 that might as well have been called "Wax Tax & Friends" and the dj mixes on B96 that might as well have been called "Dance Mania & Friends". I was amazed at these punk rock hippie looking motherfuckers from the UK who were cross pollinating all these sounds that had been part of the background music of Chicago my whole life. And hardly anyone knew who they were, so I tried to turn everyone I knew onto them. I slipped the cd to the dj at my bar mitzvah and asked him to play "Voodoo People" or "Breathe" and instead he played the much less family-friendly "Their Law", (probably) by mistake.

When they got signed to Maverick and started to appear in Spin and were going to release a new album, I was so excited, and Fat of the Land came out and... it was alright. They pushed the aggro angle to hard and, while they were far brainier and groovier than the radio industrial of Gravity Kills or the nu-metal of KoRn, the music wasn't any hookier and it kind of blended in, and I fell out of love.

I haven't listened to their subsequent albums beyond the singles but I'm feeling nostalgic and I think I'll have to check out the new album, now that I'm at an age where I won't be personally disappointed if it isn't great.
posted by elr at 12:12 PM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Ils sont Charly"
posted by symbioid at 12:40 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whatever they are, they aren't wanna-be house. Their music is nothing like house music. They're a breakbeat act through and through.

I liked their earlier stuff when it was more about the dance floor and less about radio, but he's still an amazing producer no matter what he makes.
posted by empath at 12:47 PM on January 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

I was also pretty into them until the cartoonishly aggro stuff, at which point I mostly checked out. The two huge acts along these lines were them and Chemical Brothers, and in retrospect the Chemical Brothers are a far bigger deal to my mind.
posted by naju at 12:55 PM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

in retrospect the Chemical Brothers are a far bigger deal to my mind

Totally agree.
posted by billiebee at 1:07 PM on January 17, 2015

Bands that have been going for a few decades deciding to go grim dark, crank up the distortion and do cartoonish aggro can go either way; I still remember Primal Scream doing this, and having the impression of it sounding like a clapped-out blues busker who just discovered his teenage son's Nine Inch Nails CDs.
posted by acb at 1:31 PM on January 17, 2015

I'm just going to mention here that I went as Keith Flint (the sort of clown looking guy who is always sticking out his tongue) for Halloween one year and not a single person in my entire high school had any idea who the hell I was, despite my frantically gesticulating and yelling "OI'M THE FIAH-STAH-TAH, TAH-WISTED FIAH-STAH-TAH" which this one dude just straight up put me in a headlock

There's nothing sadder than a sad teenage breakbeat drug clown
posted by jake at 2:27 PM on January 17, 2015 [11 favorites]

I never listened to Prodigy, so I can't tell which of the disparaging comments are legitimate and which are just sniffy rockism.
posted by Pope Guilty at 2:39 PM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

If they wanted to be remembered they probably shouldn't have made disposable electronic twaddle.

oh it's only real music if it's not electronic

or not for dance floors

or something
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:27 PM on January 17, 2015 [3 favorites]

As for the track.. it's same old same old Prodigy, but their same old is damn good and hella fun, so no complaints here.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:34 PM on January 17, 2015 [2 favorites]

oh it's only real music if it's not electronic

This, but unironically.
posted by entropicamericana at 5:32 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

Whatevs, gramps.
posted by acb at 5:35 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

I liked Prodigy back in the day, but let's be real. If these dudes made enough money that over a decade later they own bars and shit, they should really count their blessings and not bitch about how they should be as lionized as Oasis (!). They're a fun band that, in darker moments, I reflect may have been the Limp Bizkit of electronic music, but mostly I think were just a fun band. I guess they still are, and that's pretty cool. But let's don't make a big thing of it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:52 PM on January 17, 2015 [1 favorite]

This, but unironically.

You're joking, right? Or are you seriously saying that electronic music isn't 'real' music?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:01 PM on January 17, 2015

All modern music is electronic. You aren't hearing strings being plucked when you hear rock guitar, you're hearing a speaker cone rattling. Literally all rock music is and has always been centered on electronically simulated sound.
posted by saulgoodman at 6:02 PM on January 17, 2015 [5 favorites]

I've got all five previous Prodigy albums in iTunes. This single makes me kinda feel like this one is 'stream before buying'. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this hyper-aggro stuff.

Thanks for the heads-up, though, now I know to keep an eye out for it.
posted by egypturnash at 7:01 PM on January 17, 2015

Not even sure if these otherwise contentless posts just sniffily knocking the band are pooh-poohing all "electronic" music as bad, or The Prodigy as bad electronic music.

Either way, they really were as important as Blur or Oasis in their time, and rightly so. Sometimes metafilter does not do music well.
posted by ominous_paws at 12:49 AM on January 19, 2015

Musicless Music Video of Firestarter
(I laughed, probably too much)
posted by DigDoug at 11:10 AM on January 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I'm a foleystarter
twisted foleystarter
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:32 AM on January 19, 2015

The Day Is My Enemy
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 1:11 AM on January 28, 2015 [1 favorite]