The Prodigy

[roolfdriht]

I think it came down to it's either Flint or The Prodigy.

Thanks for the comprehensive response! I can certainty see promotional cycle issues complicating a release, but I still find myself wanting to believe there was some additional factor that pushed the record into the permanently cancelled category vs. just delayed (which may just be the typical and unsatisfying "record company economics/politics" catch-all). In any event, I suppose I'm glad that all parties ultimately realized which side their bread is buttered on and stuck together.

[neorev]

Thanks for the comprehensive response! I can certainty see promotional cycle issues complicating a release, but I still find myself wanting to believe there was some additional factor that pushed the record into the permanently cancelled category vs. just delayed (which may just be the typical and unsatisfying "record company economics/politics" catch-all). In any event, I suppose I'm glad that all parties ultimately realized which side their bread is buttered on and stuck together.

I've been following the band closely for many years, been a fan since the 4th grade (1993). Where folks here are obsessed with Nine Inch Nails, I've been obsessed with The Prodigy lol.

Yeah, sadly we never got a definitive answer why. I actually like the Flint album too. I have the 12 track version (technically 13 tracks) ripped in lossless along with "Danny" b-side from Aim 4 single. Youth produced the Flint stuff. Flint also did a remix for Marilyn Manson's Mobscene, it's on the MM single. But I think all the bad blood during this period and finally coming back together for the release of AONO was behind Keith deciding to stick with The Prodigy instead of going solo. But it could have been a label thing too.

The most the band ever really got into talking about it was that they said some outsiders/friends were trying to get in between them. Someone would go to Liam's and be like "Did you hear Keith is writing with other people?" and someone would go over to Keith's and say "Did you hear Liam is doing this?" That's how they got the name "Invaders Must Die," which to them was their big return with the three of them being a band together again. AONO was a down period for them and Keith and Maxim were not on AONO in the end. They said what really brought them together again was when they were putting together the Their Law:The Singles 1990-2005 compilation. They were going through old photos and footage, looking back upon their career, and putting together the Their Law release. They said that brought them together and made them feel like brothers again because it made them look at all that they accomplished together over the years and they started to have a laugh like the old days.

They barely play anything from AONO anymore probably because they look at that period negatively. For the Their Law tour, they even tried to get Leeroy to come back to dance on a couple of tracks live. Leeroy came out for one night and Liam was all buzzing afterward and wanted him to come out for more shows, but Leeroy turned him down and said he just wanted to do the one show.

I got Maxim's and Leeroy's solo stuff. I liked Maxim's first solo album Hell's Kitchen where as I didn't really like feel Fallen Angel that much. Hell's Kitchen is hip hop based with Maxim collaborating with different rappers, vocalists, and producers. Liam Howlett actually shows up on Hell's Kitchen as he helped produced "Scheming" with Maxim and did some vocal production on the track "My Web." Maxim has his We Are Noize project, which is dubstep/trap type electronic music, and DJs sometimes in between albums as well as paints and does art.

You should check out this interview with Leeroy that gets into a bit of what happened when he left the band and being asked back for the Their Law tour...


Also, longtime friend and writer Martin James, who has written a couple of Prodigy biographies has gone back and rewritten and expanded the first part of a new Prodigy biography limited edition book called We Eat Rhythm that covers the start of their career up until around the time of AONO. He's planning a second part to come out next year that covers from Invaders Must Die to now...

[neorev]

Leeroy Thorhill actually had quite a few music projects and aliases. During his time with The Prodigy, he released music under his name, as Stamina, and as The Longman. Usually small run vinyl only releases.

Longman - The Suspect


The Longman (1996)

https://www.discogs.com/The-Longman-...master/1373594

When he left The Prodigy, he focused on his own solo music as Flightcrank and put out his first official album Beyond All Reasonable Doubt, which mashed up quite a few different genres from trip hop to dub to pop to acoustic.

Flightcrank - Amazing


Flightcrank - What U Need


Beyond All Reasonable Doubt (2000)

https://www.discogs.com/Flightcrank-...r/master/30020

He would later form a band with electronic music producer DJ Hyper with Leeroy on vocals and also featured Prodigy's live guitarist Jim Davies (also of Pitchshifter) and their live drummer Kieron Pepper. They called themselves Hyper and released their album We Control, which featured this cover song with Leeroy on vocals...

Hyper - Ant Music


Hyper - Morning


We Control (2006)

https://www.discogs.com/Hyper-We-Control/master/128583

More recently, Leeroy formed Smash HiFi with Marten Hörger and has also been DJing and self-releasing under his own name.

Smash HiFi - Bombs N Beartraps (ft. The Legionnaires)


Order More Disorder (2016)

https://www.discogs.com/Smash-HiFi-O...elease/9167868

[neorev]

Maxim aka Keith Palmer has also put out his own solo work. One of his first releases was a vinyl only EP under the name Grim Reaper in 1994. Similar to Leeroy's Longman EP, it was a very limited short run, only 500 copies were pressed.

Grim Reaper - Mightier Than Mighty


Grim Reaper (1994)

https://www.discogs.com/Grim-Reaper-...release/423248

Maxim began focusing on his solo work during the break between The Fat Of The Land and Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. Solo tracks popped up on various label compilations, such "Dog Day" on XL's Against The Grain and his cover of "Factory Girl" on 21 Beggars Banquet release. He would release his first album Hell's Kitchen with XL Recordings in 2000.

Maxim - My Web

Vocals mixed by Liam Howlett

Maxim - Scheming


Maxim - Carmen Queasy (feat. Skin)


Hell's Kitchen (2000)

https://www.discogs.com/Maxim-Hells-...n/master/29963

In between albums, he dropped a rockier single called "Survivor" as a limited edition vinyl in 2004.

Maxim - Survivor


He would finally release a follow up album called Fallen Angel in 2005, which took his dark hip hop style into a more electronic, poppier direction.

Maxim - I Don't Care (feat. Porsha)


Fallen Angel (2005)

https://www.discogs.com/Maxim-Fallen-Angel/master/29987

He would later join forces with Cianna Blaze and put out music as Maxim and as We Are Noize. These tracks were more based in dubstep, trap, and grime music. They utilized social media to release their singles and EPs digitally.

Maxim - Baddest Breed (feat. Cianna Blaze


We Are Noize - Bad Gyal


Maxim is also known for his art side. He likes to paint and has had his work featured in galleries.

[neorev]

We now all know about Keith Flint's band Flint that sadly didn't make it far enough to officially release their album...

But did you know he was also was part of another project?



Yup, they were called Clever Brains Fryin', an electroclash, punk, rap band... that also disbanded and disappeared off the face of the earth. It seems Keith was keeping himself busy during the long break between The Fat Of The Land and Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. Clever Brains Fryin' were actually a five piece band with turntablist DJ Jason Laid Back, MC Bad Manner, MC Sir Real, vocalist Claire Cherequi and Keith Flint. Like his band Flint, they even performed live at festivals, including Donatella's Versace Fashion Parade in Milan and at Global Gathering 2004. They worked together in the studio for over year and all that ever surfaced was this one EP...



Besides his band Flint and Clever Brains Fryin', Keith has only guest appeared on a couple of other artist's tracks. Sadly Flint's album Device #1, produced by Youth, was canceled and only a small amount of promo CDs got out, which now sell for $100+ on Discogs and eBay.

UNKLE - No Pain No Gain

Vocals by Richard File & Keith Flint

Caspa - War (feat. Keith Flint)

[Maximilian]

Been waiting nearly a decade for Dirtchamber Sessions Volume Two. Guess it's not a thing.

[neorev]

Been waiting nearly a decade for Dirtchamber Sessions Volume Two. Guess it's not a thing.

I love the Dirtchamber Sessions, one of the best fucking mixes ever. I know Liam Howlett has teased a volume 2 for years, but I'm not so sure it will happen. Liam was outspoken about the terrible time he went through getting approval from all of the labels to use their tracks in his mix.

Folks may not know this, but the version of Dirtchamber Sessions that was released that we all all know and love is not the original intended mix. Liam dropped the original Dirtchamber Sessions on BBC Radio 1's The Breezeblock on October 13th, 1998. This version featured a different opening as well as some more tracks mixed throughout, including Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. Liam got the approval to use the song from Paul McCartney, but their label blocked it. So Liam had to go back re-edit and re-record these bits to remove the tracks labels blocked him from using.

Even wilder, there was a very, very small run of promo CDs (only 25) handed out to those close to the band with the original Dirtchamber Sessions on it. Sadly, these promos have never shown up for sale or leaked anywhere. I did find one guy who had a copy and was ready to drop a lot of cash on it, but the guy turned douchey and wouldn't go the with the sale. I think he knew I wanted to share it with a fan community that I am a part of. I really wanted that promo CD. The best we got is a recording from back in the day of The Breezeblock broadcast with the original mix as it was intended.

Liam Howlett on The Breezeblock 1998
http://www.soundcloud.com/liam-howle...reezeblock-mix

http://www.mixcloud.com/dondi74/liam...eezeblock-mix/

[neorev]

Electronic Punks is a fun look at the band that was released on VHS in 1995. It includes official music videos from Experience and Music For The Jilted Generation as well as live performances filmed during the Poison Tour intercut with behind the scenes footage of the band fooling around, hanging out, rehearsing, making music videos, touring, etc. You will also hear the unreleased track "We Eat Rhythm" played during the end credits. After the credits, there is a moment of silence/blackness and then the making of the Poison music video.



Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

Part 7

Part 8

Part 9


01 Voodoo People (Official Video)
02 Rock And Roll (Live)
03 Out of Space (Official Video)
04 Break and Enter 95 (Live)
05 One Love (Official Video)
06 Their Law (Live)
07 Wind It Up (Official Video)
08 Voodoo People (Live)
09 Poison (Official Video)
10 No Good (Start the Dance) (Live)
11 Charly (Official Video)
12 Poison (Live)
13 Everybody in the Place (Official Video)
14 Rhythm of Life (Live)
15 No Good (Start the Dance) (Official Video)
16 We Eat Rhythm (End Credits)

[acrid avid jam shred]

Thanks for posting all of this awesome Prodigy info Neorev! I didn't know about all of their different sideprojects and behind the scenes stuff. I gotta check out Hell's Kitchen!

I'm hoping that we get to see a tracklisting for No Tourists soon, it would be super sweet if a new version of that track with 3D pops up.

[neorev]

Thanks for posting all of this awesome Prodigy info Neorev! I didn't know about all of their different sideprojects and behind the scenes stuff. I gotta check out Hell's Kitchen!

I'm hoping that we get to see a tracklisting for No Tourists soon, it would be super sweet if a new version of that track with 3D pops up.

As a hardcore fan, it's my pleasure. Happy to help and turn folks on to Prodigy stuff they may not have heard yet. Sadly Liam is a bit known for scrapping material and tracks never getting released.


P.S.
Here's a Fat Of The Land era cover Liam did of The Specials' "Ghost Town," which he decided to leave off when trip hop artist Tricky did his own cover around the same time. They played it live once at Reading 1998. Liam ended up putting out two slightly different versions many years later, one on the NME & Warchild Presents 1 Love compilation in 2002 and the other on the Independents Day ID08 compilation in 2008. Unlike its live performance, Maxim and Keith are not featured on the studio version.

Ghost Town


The Prodigy have also performed covers of Dog's "War" and Madness' "Nightboat To Cairo" live, which only short, crappy live recordings have surfaced, and their cover of The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster's track "Rise Of The Eagles" was the iTunes bonus track for The Day Is My Enemy.

Ghost Town (Live At Reading 1998)

Keith and Maxim perform vocals

Nightboat To Cairo (Live At Leeds 2002 with a sax player!)

During the bridge, Liam drops an early version of "Medusa's Path" with Maxim on vocals.

War (Creamfields 2007)

Skip to 3:26 for "War."

Rise Of The Eagles

Available on iTunes.

[neorev]

Looks like a Need Some1 remix EP is on the way, The Prodigy have posted two official remixes so far...

Need Some1 (Friction Remix)


Need Some1 (Wh0 Remix)

[neorev]

Thunder
One of my favorite Prodigy tracks...

[acrid avid jam shred]

That track's awesome. I can remember buying Invaders Must Die on iTunes when I first started listening to the Prodigy back in 2012. I think I might've have started with that record first instead of FOTL. Take Me to the Hospital, Warrior's Dance and Run With the Wolves are my three favourites. I love how Liam mixed in Dave Grohl's live drums in Wolves.

[neorev]

That track's awesome.

A remix Liam dropped for the live shows...
THUNDER DUB

[neorev]

Clip of a new Prodigy track in their UK/European tour announcement!

[SM Rollinger]

How about US dates???

[neorev]

How about US dates???

Nothing announced yet. The last tours in the US in 2005 and 2009 were in March/April.

[neorev]

The Prodigy debuted their new track "Light Up The Sky" on Sunday at Electric Picnic. This is the same song featured in the tour announcement video.

[neorev]

Another vid of them testing out Light Up The Sky. Seems they only gave us a short taste and didn't play the full track.



They have no shows until the album release. I think the single will drop within the next couple of weeks or so.

[neorev]

A better recording of the track...

[neorev]

New single Light Up The Sky drops tomorrow, Sept. 26th!

[elevenism]

Hot damn!!!!

Also, @neorev , I owned digital punks and watched it over and over back in the 90s on VHS.

I think I'm one of the few prodigy fans who was seriously into it before FOTL, and still prefer experience (and especially experience expanded) to any of their other records.

I think I've told you this, but my brother named his firstborn son Liam, and he is 100% named after Liam H.

[neorev]

Hot damn!!!!

Also, @neorev , I owned digital punks and watched it over and over back in the 90s on VHS.

I think I'm one of the few prodigy fans who was seriously into it before FOTL, and still prefer experience (and especially experience expanded) to any of their other records.

I think I've told you this, but my brother named his firstborn son Liam, and he is 100% named after Liam H.

I started listening to them back in 1993. My friend Brian in the fourth grade brought in his Sony Walkman and Priority Records' The Best Of Rave Volume 1 cassette. First time I heard rave/electronic music. On that tape was The Prodigy's remix of "Instruments Of Darkness" by Art Of Noise. I went home and described what I heard that day in school to my brother and we literally went right out that day and picked up the same Best Of Rave comp on CD (at Walmart of all places). From there, we began buying more rave compilations. The very next one was a double disc from Rhino Records that we picked up at Sam Goody in the mall and it featured "Charly (Alley Cat Mix)" and "Everybody In The Place (Fairground Mix)." That made use search for The Prodigy and we found their album Experience and the "Charly/Everybody In The Place" US EP. "Experience" blew my mind. The rest is history. We collected whatever we could find by them. A year later Jilted dropped and my mind was blown again.

I remember the night I first heard and saw "Firestarter," but had no clue it was The Prodigy. I was getting ready for bed cuz I had school in the morning and had MTV on. I missed the opening credits telling the artist/track info. So I had sat watching the black and white video with no idea who I was listening to. I remember sitting in awe and not moving. What I was hearing was blowing my mind. I yelled for my brother to get in the room and he came running. We sat there with our mouths open. Then the video finished and the credits came up: The Prodigy, Firestarter, Music From The Jilted Generation, Mute Records. I was like "What the hell?!?! This is The Prodigy?!?! What the fuck happened to them?" as it sounded nothing like anything else I've ever heard before. Living in the US, I only knew them from the few band shots they had on the back of the albums and singles. They didn't have their image yet that would be splattered all over MTV in the coming years. Keith looked completely different with his crazy hair. I remember grabbing my Jilted CD and looking at it cuz I knew "Firestarter" was not on it. This is how early it was when that video dropped here in the US. MTV didn't even have the correct credits for it. I had to tape the instrumental by putting my Wipeout XL PS video game disc into my CD play. That held me over until the single finally showed up in stores.

Man, the memories. The whole build up The Fat Of The Land was awesome. I used to draw their logo all over my school books. No one in my school knew who they were. Then a few years later The Fat Of The Land drops, they become huge, and the next thing you know they're playing "Firestarter" and "Breathe" at my 8th grade school dance. My classmates dancing along. Fucking posers.

[elevenism]

Then a few years later The Fat Of The Land drops, they become huge, and the next thing you know they're playing "Firestarter" and "Breathe" at my 8th grade school dance. My classmates dancing along. Fucking posers.

Yeah bro they "sold out."

14 year old me said that a LOT without REALLY understanding what it even meant :P also i don't REALLY think they "sold out" hahahaha. i actually was far more pissed at Trent for Closer. IDK, i kind of got the feeling that the changes in The Prodigy were what Keith and Maxim wanted and MAYBE a logical progression as far as letting those guys have more input.

But yeah, ok so, you told your story.

With me it was this: i was 14, freshman year, 94ish. And i was smoking cigarettes with some seniors: i had managed to talk my way into hanging out with these cool older kids somehow. One morning they were listening to something and i was like "what in the FUCK is THIS?!"
it was a dubbed cassette of Fire/Jericho. It was a holy shit moment and the first actual real full on modern electronic music i had ever heard.

So of course i had to run right out and get Experience and Jilted.

a few years later, when Firestater came out, my hs girlfriend and i each got a cassette single which we both played literally just fucking over and over and over again for weeks :P

I also remember the world premier of Breathe on Edge Club, a show in dallas that played electronic music at night on the weekend.

Oh and also, what is dope is, i saw those motherfuckers in 97

Edit: @neorev it's so funny. I was calling people "poser" before I knew what it meant, making ME a poser.

[neorev]

@elevenism
The Fat Of The Land is my favorite album, but sadly didn't get to see them in NYC when they played here that year. I was 13 years old at the time and had no one to go with. Obviously my mom wouldn't let me go into the city by myself back then lol. I finally got to see them in 2005 for the Their Law Tour and and in 2009 for the Invaders Tour. I got to hear Break And Enter '05, Back 2 Skool, Warning, and Dead Ken Beats at the 2005 show. When I saw them in 2009, I got hear Breathe Dubstep, Thunder, and Comanche. That whole show I was thinking "Please play Thunder, please play Thunder.l" as it's my favorite song off Invaders Must Die. Then about half way through their set, they start jamming some synth sounds and I hear Maxim say "I hear Thunder" and suddenly the opening riff of it begins. They dropped this awesome slightly re-edited/tweaked version of it that was awesome. People went nuts and were singing along to the hook. They only played it a couple of times and each time was pretty different at it seems Liam was trying to rework it live. Sadly, Thunder disappeared quickly from the setlist. Never understood how Liam didn't see what a banger it was live. Later on, he began playing Thunder Dub, which is a completely different version of the track, cool, but very different. Apparently he prefers the Dub version over the original. So sadly you will probably never hear the original ever again live. He even started playing Thunder Dub again at recent shows.

[neorev]

LIGHT UP THE SKY

[neorev]

LIGHT UP THE SKY (PENGSHUi REMIX)

[Maximilian]

I'm feeling this tune even though I've never heard of his collaborator.

[fillow]

So, we're getting The Day Is My Enemy II (aka Invaders III). It's sad that they pretty much stopped evolving.

[neorev]

@fillow
I don't know, but I don't feel these new tracks sound anything like IMD or TDIME. Feels more modern and new and the production is loads better. I do feel IMD and TDIME are like brothers, one upbeat and happy and the other dark and brooding. But I'm getting a whole other vibe with this one. It sounds like it's gonna be very diverse, especially since one song is a collaboration with a folk singer. For me, this album is like The Fat Of The Land meets Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned.