ON THE fast-track Hollywood party circuit, so it is rumoured, whenever talk gets round to the thrill-seekers of legend (those party-cruisers who could display a resilience in the face of unlimited amounts of booze, debauchery and abandon that would make the most hardened of rave-circuit heads wilt), the name of one man comes up with unerring regularity. Indeed, so versed in the wayward ways of the dark arts was Charlie Sheen at the height of his powers, so the story goes, that names were dispensed with. He was simply known as The Machine.

Whether a group of one-time Essex ravers turned, erm, 'digi-rock' (ª the entire American music industry) pioneers called The Prodigy have invaded Charlie's consciousness to date seems unlikely but not, as their promotional people would have it, for long.

Just as we can only hope against hope that the feelgood-frenzy summer of '97 provides us with ever more improbable highs (Mike D installed as President of the US, a new Verve single every week, Tony Blair's band reforming and headlining Glasters) so it is our duty to celebrate what is clearly in the hands of the inevitable. To wit, the global acceptance of the Prod's not-remotely-difficult third album, 'The Fat Of The Land'. Because, barring calamity, it appears to quite clearly be the implement with which Liam, Maxim, Keef and Leeroy - the central cyber-personalities of their live show - break America open like a coconut and slurp its contents until it dribbles down their collective chins. It's their Fifth Element, so to speak.
[...]
What such a bullet-headed ten-track collection proves is, for once, startlingly clear. Having set out to create a record that plays firmly to their strengths (in a word, touring), the Prod have tailored their brutalist sound and deeply tongue-in-cheek cyber-vision to a point where it serves as an aural foil to the mind-boggling overload of their live show. There's barely a second goes by amidst the hailstorm of Wu-Tang-esque martial arts samples, droning synths and Gizz's kamikaze guitar breaks on 'The Fat Of The Land' when you're not picturing Leeroy hot-stepping away at his epileptic-on-an-ice rink anti-dancing, Keith bug-eyed and shivering like a (strontium) dog who's just clambered out of the local duck pond, or Maxim foaming at the mouth and inciting us to, well, smell the glove.
[...]
'Fat...' will have all manner of people scrambling to declare it as the first block rockin' post-Oasis amyl-techno-punk album. Which is precisely what it is.

And one which, as well as reaffirming their position as head-warping slam-kings of the pop underground, seems set to be the ultimate party soundtrack both sides of the ocean for anyone who likes their minds scrambled, their beats titanium-heavy and their good times as well-oiled and unstoppable as an out-of-control juggernaut. Like a single-minded machine, in fact.

No doubt about it, then. 'The Fat Of The Land' is one Charlie Sheen of an album. 8/10

quote:

”I hate the internet, it’s a piece of poo poo. It’s just a web of useless information You can’t stop what people do on it. I mean I turned one on the other day, looking at this Prodigy site and my house was on the internet. My loving house. It was like, ‘Let’s look around Liam’s house.’ You can click on it and there’s all these pictures of my house taken from different angles. I was like, ‘gently caress, they must have broken in or something.’ Luckily, it was only photos from an old magazine feature I did but the thought of people hanging around my house and taking pictures for the internet, just fucks me right off. It’s really weird.”

HJB posted:

Finally, here's The Horn Track by Egyptian Empire, posted not just because I like it, but because it should sound instantly familiar to everyone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_CjeiTHo9Q

Molestationary Store posted:

Some dude on YT deconstructed a few Prodigy tracks figuring out everything that was sampled and how it was manipulated via Ableton. Meanwhile Liam did this poo poo without a DAW.
Smack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eU5Dn-WaElI
Fire
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZImvdZ3EZI
There's a couple other Prodigy tracks tackled by this same fellow but since it's a Fat thread will leave it at those two.

Eight Is Legend posted:

Do you guys know any articles on how Liam created the tracks? I've seen these videos before and it's so amazing to me that he was able to do the same things without the use of modern software.

Wank posted:

I don't know. Experience is what got the people I hung out with then from metal onto electronic music, it completely changed everything. Jilted, I think their best album, continued to blow us all away in how it felt at the time. Fat of the Land just felt like a bit of a sellout and Prodigy were already feeling irrelevant with the electronic scene moving away from that sound. To be fair, I don't think I have listened to any of this since the 90s.

quote:

March 1996 gave us Firestarter, which took Electronic Punk to a new level and, for the first time, gave this 'faceless techno' band a charismatic frontman in Keith Flint. Mainstream success and magazine covers beckoned. Breathe followed that November boasting what music critic Gary Mulholland called "one of the all-time greatest rhythm tracks ever to be dragged from a computer." The Prodigy were now stadium fillers and the world waited for the follow up album, the one to break them in America.

Then Fat of the Land hit the shops, went straight to Number One, and indeed broke them in the US. I couldn't wait to get it home and have a listen. I didn't have a Discman at the time and had to race to my sister's to play it. She lived a full fifteen minutes jog from the record shop – some distance when you have just bought a treasured new Prodigy release. I listened: opener Smack My Bitch Up kicked the proverbial, Diesel Power was Kool and Climbatize continued the instrumental weather-related tunes that started on Experience.

But something was wrong. I didn't want to admit it. I refused to accept it. But somewhere in my brain, the honesty section probably, something was telling me that it was a piece of poo poo.
[...]
The Prodigy had peaked somewhere between the excellent Poison (1995) - the B-sides on Poison are as strong as anything found on their albums or singles - and Breathe (1996). By the time Fat of the Land came along, the band were already on the slide. It happens to some bands: the album that launches them to superstardom is usually on the back of the spadework of the previous album (Radiohead, The Bends). Fat… received such unworthy praise because there was guilt about being slow to pick up on what a ground-breaking album Jilted… actually was.

quote:

Their success certainly owes something to their image. The Prodigy have identities as distinct and marketable as Britain's other great musical export, the Spice Girls. There's Mad Prodigy (Keith, wide-eyed, hair-dyed and with so many body piercings that he sets off metal detectors in airports), Scary Prodigy (Maxim Reality, the black MC who wears snake-eye contact lenses and gold fangs), Giant Prodigy (Leeroy Thornhill, a six-foot-six dancer who describes what he does as "the music unleashed") and Brainy Prodigy (blond, handsome Liam Howlett, running the show from behind a bank of keyboards).

Abugadu posted:

And everything afterwards just felt phoned in, like they would find a hook for the start of a song and be like 'well that's done', they didn't go anywhere with them, just tweaked the hook slightly for ~4 minutes. Every time they come out with a new album I give it a listen, hoping in vain for any of the songs to come close to the a-side stuff from FotL.

freudorbison posted:

I think that ultimately, like with anything old and unpopular - Fat of the Land would have to be put into a very different context to be massively appreciated again.

ytisomauq posted:

Say/think what you will about the genre generally and the remix, the Numbernin6 dubstep remix of Breathe is something old in a different context. It's the right kind of freshness, I think.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gD_d1Vl7uAk

Zyklon B Zombie posted:

I'm actually kind of surprised that any sort of retro Big Beat revival hasn't rolled around yet.

Abugadu posted:

I loved Fat of the Land, thought it was the peak of Prodigy as Jilted was great, but different, more raw. And everything afterwards just felt phoned in

ytisomauq posted:

I totally agree with you here. Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned could be described exactly this way.

buildmorefarms posted:

One thing which always puzzled me; was there any reliable (i.e. liam, I suppose?) sources on how much keith/maxim/leeroy contributed to the tracks? I always wondered how much creative input they had.

Zyklon B Zombie posted:

I'm actually kind of surprised that any sort of retro Big Beat revival hasn't rolled around yet.

freudorbison posted:

Check out Lone's Levitate.

SUNKOS posted:

While I don't consider AONO to be very good, the track Girls was way ahead of the curve and I think Liam should have gone all-in with that sound and style for the album, because he was ahead of his peers by about a decade with that tune and it's always seemed like a brief spark of genius that he didn't have the confidence to fully commit to. Seeing that same sound explode on the electro scene so long after Liam had released that track only confirms this. I remember reading about him being nervous and unsure of how to follow-up FOTL, so it's understandable that the album turned out the way that it did since the more-of-the-same approach of Baby's Got A Temper wasn't received well at the time.

buildmorefarms posted:

One thing which always puzzled me; was there any reliable (i.e. liam, I suppose?) sources on how much keith/maxim/leeroy contributed to the tracks? I always wondered how much creative input they had.

david_a posted:

I always thought Leeroy was kind of weird - a member of the band that was just a dancer? I can't think of another band like that. I mean, is Prodigy actually a "band" or is it just Liam doing 99% of everything?