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<  PRODIGY NEWS  ~  New NME Article - Dated 07/02/09

PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 3:36 pm
User avatarGeneralGeneralPosts: 2862Location: Bristol, UKJoined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:58 pm
Just checked the NME in sainsburys and saw there was two pages of Prodigy stuff in there, so I thought i'd buy it and write it up til I can find a scanner and a working computer :lol: Turns out its actually 1 page of writing and the other page is a picture of the three of them. As i'm bored and on my lunch, i'll write it up...so here it is:

Quote:
Out Of Place

In the ‘90s their punk-cum-thrash-cum-acid house rave racket made the whole world start the dance. But in 2009, where do The Prodigy fit in? asks Tim Chester.

The year 2002 wasn’t a great one for The Prodigy. What was meant to be a triumphant comeback from a five-year hiatus by an era-defining band turned into a car crash. The public stoning centered around the much-mocked release of the worst song of their career (‘Baby’s Got A Temper’), a track about the so-called ‘date-rape’ drug Rohypnol. Produced by a group grown old and irrelevant in a world moving on in a quantum leaps, it made them controversial for all the wrong reasons. In their time away something had gone horribly wrong.

Shattered and fragmented, they split into disorientated fractions while mainman Liam Howlett created album number four, ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’. Generously marked 6/10 by NMW, their 2004 effort failed to muster any interest despite the fact that Juliette Lewis, Kool Keith and even both Gallagher brothers were drafted in to replace a post-Rohypnol-gate Keith and Maxim. One reviewer even wondered aloud at the time if departed dancer Leeroy “was actually the talented one”. Keith’s side band, Flint, mustered together a debut album which never saw the light of day while Maxim’s solo effort was presciently entitled ‘Fallen Angel’.

It was tragic seeing this band so outnumbered by post-Strokes guitar bands and so outgunned by DJs who had moved on. This, after all, was the band whose previous album ‘The Fat Of The Land’ hit the top spot on both sides of the Atlantic and in 25 other countries simultaneously: the fastest-selling album of the year, it spawned the epochal likes of ‘Breathe’, ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ and ‘Firestarter’. Here was a band of fearless punk pioneers who brought rave to the mainstream, guitars to dance music and fear to everyone over the age of 30. And here they were looking more like the post-millennial Stones than the Libs, closer to Country Life Johnny Rotten than his earlier public image they’d assumed.

In 2009, though, the world has turned to face their direction again like the 2D sun worshippers in the ‘One Love’ video. Pendulum are taking over one club at a time in the face of steeled media apathy, new rave has come and gone in a phosphorescent flash, leaving a sea of Klaxons, Hadouken!s and Does It Offend You, Yeah?s in its wake, and the twin worlds of dance and rock have fused together permanently.

In an ultra-defiant Liam and Keith that NME meets for midday mojitos on Portobello Road a few days after their final gig of 2008 at Brixton Academy to talk about their new album, ‘Invaders Must Die’. From the title downwards their fifth effort is geared towards silencing the critics.

“’Invaders…’ is a reference to being got at on the last album,” a bottle-blond, tattoo-riddled, newly-sober Keith says. “People couple see a way in, chinks in the armour. They thought, ‘This band is so tight and can’t be infiltrated’ and it was like David and Goliath. The people that tried to get in were the invaders.”

It’s a paranoid perspective backed up by Liam who adds, while fiddling with a giant skull ring, “For me, the invaders were personal demons to do with writing and shit.”

‘Invaders Must Die’ is a relentless record. With the exception of the sun’s-rising, party’s-over closer ‘Stand Up’, it’s a densely packed battering of breakbeats, acid synth patterns and diseased riffs that exhumes some long=dead ghosts from both ‘Experience’ and ‘…Jilted…’. It’s the sound of one man staying up late for two years hellbent on regaining his glory with a memory arsenal of everything he’s accrued over two decades in a massively influential dance-rock behemoth.

It didn’t come easy. With Maxim and Keith back in the fold, the first four months working on their first album on their own label were spent “partying and drinking”. Liam spent 60 grand on a new studio, went in there and “thought, ‘Fuck, I feel weird in here.’ Two months later I shut the door, locked it p and never went back”. In-between “lunchtime looseners, and lunchtime liveners” the three took it back to basics, attempting to write songs with a guitar the traditional way, which got them nowhere.

It wasn’t until the 20th anniversary of acid house swung by and the three went round Liam’s to listen to his old rave records that things got moving. “All that old stuff, like Renegade Soundwave, it was so simple,” he says. “They were some banding tracks and they were mostly just a beat and one sound. It was also about rediscovering what headspace we were in.” Thus ‘Warrior’s Dance’ was born and the ideas – thrown about between each other with the likes of the Ed Banger crew playing quietly in the background – flowed freely. “For a grumpy bunch of fuckers it’s quite an uplifting record. It’s a fuck-you-up, fists-in-the-air type of thing,” Liam declares.

For the first time in ages, there’s not even a whisper of controversy. “If we’d picked up on anything controversial on the record we’d have disowned it was cheesy,” Keith promises. “We only wrote about Rohypnol because a lot of us were doing that at the time. The problem was we didn’t have our shit together to back it up, which weakened it significantly.”

Liam adds, “When we did ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ it was a genius video, nothing touched it for years. When I saw Justice trying to be controversial it didn’t have any weight to it. Doherty squirting blood was the last time I was shocked. Everyone’s too wise now.”

Maybe it’s a sign of the times, or perhaps its down to their skirting-40 age group. Or maybe Liam doesn’t fancy the idea of “hanging out playing with Play-Doh” with his son Ace, wife Natalie Appleton, her sister Nicole and husband Liam Gallagher and their kids by day, while making more allusions to date rape and bitch-smacking by night.

This time, too, the collaborations are kept to a minimum, with only Does It Offend You, Yeah?’s James Rushent (“he shone a light on another way forward for ‘Warrior’s…’) and the ever-present Dave Grohl. “He emailed us and said he’d finished touring and wanted to play drums again,” Keith remembers, “then he sent Liam a hard drive with four hours of beats he’d recorded in his warehouse, different beats on different kits.”

They added a beat to some vocals Keith had done for a previous track. “I added one of my Tourette’s, shouting-in-the-ear vocals,” Keith says, “and because I was off my maracas it had too much venom.” So the whole thing was sent back to Grohl who redid his part. Thus ‘Colours’ was born. Must mean ‘Run With The Wolves’

So where does all this fit them in with the herd as we march through 2009 and into an unknown musical future? “Everyone else is the enemy,” Liam insists. “We want to steamroller over everyone with this record. We think we’re better than every other band – if you don’t think that then why are you doing it?”

“When I go to a festival,” Keith adds, “I don’t want to headline, I just want to go there and make every other band feel insignificant.”

“Every band shout be like that,” Liam agrees. “When you go to war you don’t shake the enemy’s hand and say, ‘Nice one, I’ll meet you later for a drink’ and then think, ‘What a fucking bunch of cunts.’ They are the enemy, man, and that’s how it is.

It’s fighting talk - literally - from the pair in a conversation that’s been peppered with battleground analogies. There’s a real sense that they returned home from ‘Always Outnumbered…’ wounded and resolving to come back and conquer. It’s in every pulse of ‘Invaders Must Die’’s relentless ideas avalanche, a desperate need to see off all contenders and eliminate all threats.

“We are not threatened by anyone,” Ketih insists. “We don’t have a chalkboard in the studio thinking, ‘We must take out these bands’.” Liam: “it’s more a feeling that we’ve made a great record and nothing’s going to get in our way.” “it’s hard when you put into words what kind of band you are and what you sound like,” Keith adds. “It’s more what it feels like.” And it feels like last Friday night at Brixton? “Yeah, that’s your answer to everything,” he replies. “Friday night at Brixton. That is the answer to everything. That’s the reason I’m alive. Wasn’t their last one a Saturday?


This shows how little I do at work :lol:


Last edited by JimbQ on Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:08 pm
User avatarProdigious ArabPosts: 4204Location: The Dark SideJoined: Sun Sep 03, 2006 5:22 pm
Nice one good job, cant wait for the rest 8-)


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:11 pm
User avatarGeneralGeneralPosts: 2862Location: Bristol, UKJoined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:58 pm
Finished 8-)



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:14 pm
CorporalCorporalPosts: 378Joined: Wed Nov 05, 2008 6:04 pm
nice interview 8-)
thanks jim


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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:17 pm
User avatarSergeantSergeantPosts: 418Location: Worcester, EnglandJoined: Tue Jan 27, 2009 8:22 pm
Nice one!

Cheers for that mate, it made excellent reading! I'm at work too, and have too much time on my hands and an absent manager lol!



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:33 pm
User avatarGeneralGeneralPosts: 2881Location: ESTJoined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 3:30 pm
thas was enjoyable, thanks for makin this possible Jim :wink:



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 4:59 pm
SergeantSergeantPosts: 436Joined: Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:43 pm
it's good to hear how great the album is from fans but from people who were haters it means so much more.

19 days ladies and gents 19 fucking days, BRING IT! INVADERS MUST DIE!



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:45 pm
User avatarGeneralGeneralPosts: 2753Location: Amsterdam, NetherlandsJoined: Tue Nov 21, 2006 7:00 pm
Great read!

Cheers mate.



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:55 pm
User avatarGeneralGeneralPosts: 1306Location: RomâniaJoined: Fri Jun 13, 2008 5:58 am
good post!
thanx!



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 5:55 pm
User avatarModeratorModeratorPosts: 4789Location: Wolverhampton, UKJoined: Thu Aug 31, 2006 3:52 pm
Cheers James



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 7:02 pm
User avatarGeneralGeneralPosts: 1718Location: Always outdrunk, Never outsoberJoined: Fri Apr 13, 2007 1:32 pm
10/10 me ol' mucker :-D



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Shit story isn't it?
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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:35 pm
User avatarModeratorModeratorPosts: 1980Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:27 am
Two mins and you can have scans :)



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:50 pm
User avatarPrivatePrivatePosts: 100Location: Buffalo USAJoined: Mon Sep 25, 2006 10:22 am
Thanks Jim. now change that annoying avatar! haha



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 8:53 pm
User avatarModeratorModeratorPosts: 1980Joined: Thu Sep 14, 2006 8:27 am
Here we go.
Please excuse the slight colour differences: NME is slightly larger than A4 so I have had to join 3 scans together to give 2 full pages.

Thumbnails below: click links at the bottom for larger pics as the board doesn't work with clickable thumbnails due to the re-sizer.

Image Image

PAGE 1 PAGE 2



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PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 9:05 pm
User avatarPrivatePrivatePosts: 242Location: LondonJoined: Thu Jun 05, 2008 10:32 am
i hate NME they are just as bad at slagging bands off one minute, then sucking their cocks the next as Kerrang.


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