Prodigy - Early rave, big beat and beyond

Much has been said, in many ways, about Prodigy, one of the most significant projects in the entire history of mass dance electronic music. What's the point of creating yet another retrospective on the Essex group, when there are already so many in circulation? A plausible answer is the need to talk about it in terms of experience, rather than writing another chronicle of it, however thorough.

"The Prodigy experience" is a twenty-five-year story, always successful, that has won fairly broad acclaim for capturing the evolution of electronic sound, reinterpreting it with a distinctive creative flair, moving from early rave to what was generally labelled big beat (a term originally coined by Iain Williams for a remix of an Abba track, "Big Bang", but which then became a genre in its own right, built on the heavy use of breakbeats) all the way to techno-rock crossovers (of which they were among the pioneers) and the new genres born after 2000, including Dubstep. Even though they were never the first to plant the flag of a new genre (though that was never their goal), they managed to become the most famous rockstars of electronic music, constantly touring the world and playing to massive crowds.

Hard to imagine, back in 1990, that electronic sound would ever take that turn, or that mainstream music would feel the shockwave unleashed by an album like The Fat Of The Land, leaving its mark on the work of far more commercial artists. One example among many? The filthy breakbeat that opens "Charlie Big Potato" by Skunk Anansie, released in 1999. It's no coincidence that, the following year, Maxim Reality and Skin would release the single "Carmen Queasy". This isn't the only instance of a melting-pot process in which Prodigy played a leading role. Likewise, just as the Essex group had a more or less direct influence on the artists of those years, Liam was in turn influenced by the EBM sound of Belgium's Front 242, producing, in 1996, a remix of their track "Religion". That EP, titled "Happiness", is the best testimony to the meeting between electronic body music and English big beat.

At first, "the experience" was the rave party and the sound was early rave - that still undefined and hard-to-classify dance-electronic hybrid from which genres like Dutch hardcore, breakbeat, drum'n'bass and so on would later emerge. Acid-drenched synths, fast, frantic, convulsive rhythms, sampling and, above all, the broken beat are the main ingredients of an electronic revolution that, by the mid-90s, would carry this sound beyond closed circuits and subcultural barriers: into the mainstream, that is. In this Duchampian rereading of electronic music, Prodigy played the role of frontier contemporary artists.

The English, however, added to the electronic maelstrom a particular interest in the physicality and explosiveness of rock and punk, and, at the same time, a rich hip-hop substratum, a genre that played a crucial role in Howlett's development, who, let's not forget, started out as a DJ in that genre. It's this synthesis, this knack for combining the various elements as skillfully as in a Pop Art collage, that makes their sound so strikingly fresh and compelling even for so-called "outsiders".

A twenty-five-year arc in which they rode the wave of what was new (back then, as much as today) and pushed past boundaries, breaking them down and giving rise to an extremely rich, groove-laden and explosive blend that very few peers, and perhaps no one else, has managed to match in quite the same way.

The world in which the early Prodigy operated was a post-acid house England, where the certainties of the foursquare 4/4 beat and the "doors of perception" opened by acid dissolve, fragment and become increasingly claustrophobic, anxiety-inducing rhythms (Music For The Jilted Generation was one of the finest examples of this), where the imprint of African-American rhythm becomes ever more present and different cultures merge. "The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol.1", one of Howlett's finest outings ever, pays tribute to precisely this melting pot.

Like other equally important acts known for capturing, albeit in different ways, electronic sound and its subcultures, Prodigy also stood out for never-trivial features, such as that of cult band Pop Will Eat Itself on "Their Law" and that of Kool Keith of the equally legendary Ultramagnetic MC's on "Diesel Power" first, then that of the Gallagher brothers on "Shoot Down" and that of actress and singer Juliette Lewis on "Spitfire" (yes, the one from "Cape Fear"). These are just a few notable, and at times unexpected, examples.

It would be a mistake, however, to regard them as strictly an early rave act, since their career would go on to prove their remarkable ability to shapeshift without losing expressive courage or energy. This is where the complexity lies in the cultural, more than musical, analysis of an act like the Essex group: a band that heavily influenced multiple generations of admirers, especially during their commercial peak in the early part of the second half of the 90s, when "Smack My Bitch Up" radically changed certain electronic music in a scant thirty seconds.

Let's start from the beginning, from that experience, from a story that was initially simple: a meeting between fans of the same things, tied to a scene in great ferment, one that would soon produce many important results: English drum'n'bass and English hardcore (the "broken" kind, the stepsister of the Rotterdam sound) are just two examples among many. Let's hop into the time machine and go back to the early 90s to discover the origins of this group, the roots of the legend.

What evil lurks in the hearts of men

Liam Howlett, Keith Flint, Maxim Reality, Leeroy Thornhill, Sharky. They were the original core of The Prodigy: the first is the composer of their tracks, Maxim is the vocalist, and Keith, Leeroy and Sharky are three dancers. The very first incarnation of The Prodigy (a name that pays tribute to the first synthesizer Howlett bought, a Moog Prodigy) is “Evil Minds”, a kind of rich appetizer of what was to come, their testing ground, admittedly not especially original, but a historical document of an era that has since become part of history. Some of the ideas found here now feel familiar to fans, because they were later reworked into their first proper studio effort, Experience.

In these early years, as the early rave phenomenon was winding down, The Prodigy seemed to playfully want to convey the idea of a sound close to that style, yet less playful than the typical English sound of the time (that of Scott Brown and happy hardcore), and more incisive. And it's this incisiveness that begins to come through on their first proper EP, What Evil Lurks, a title that seems to signal to the then still-smiling rave subculture that the time for smiling was over and that something new was happening. Stripped of dancer Sharky, our heroes present themselves, on a larger scale, with an EP containing some of the tracks sent to XL Recordings, one of the most important labels of the period, whose “Chapters” series captured the musical landscape of those years in great detail.

It's the unsettling sample that pays tribute to The Shadow, a famous figure from the first half of the 20th century. In these first four tracks there's already a decent taste of driving beats, groove galore and fast, claustrophobic rhythms, as in the opener that gives the EP its title (a track that, despite its typically old school sounds, still feels very current) and in the equally wild and gripping “We Gonna Rock”. Side B, on the other hand, offers a more intimate version of the project, which, especially with “Android”, reopens the doors of perception to take the listener on a journey into space, far from the ugliness of cold English reality. “Everybody In The Place” is a kind of first generational anthem, later revisited, and one that probably served as a dancefloor-filler.

The pieces that followed, which would eventually lead to Experience, matter more than the destination itself, since the album is ultimately nothing more than a revisiting of the experience built up to that point and, for the most part, a compilation of tracks already recorded.

“Charly” came out at a very particular time, when the sound was evolving and becoming more intricate. Gradually, the early breakneck, gunpowder-fuelled outbursts gave way to greater attention to the melodic side of their sound - of which “Your Love” is a small masterpiece - and, more generally, to a greater focus on groove (“Pandemonium” is a central episode in this sense, where breakbeat reigns supreme).

The EPs that followed, “Fire/Jericho”, “Out Of Space” (in which, for the first time, Liam samples Ultramagnetic MC's, as well as Max Romeo), “Everybody In The Place” and “Wind It Up”, only reinforce what had already been expressed: the computer graphics of the “Fire” video, just like the lysergic colours of the “Out Of Space” one, sketch out a positive dimension of rave culture, one capable of self-deprecating humour, blending a taste for the new - a digital world still in its infancy but perceived as a lifeline - with a strong bond with nature, a trait typically shared by ravers.

The already-mentioned 1992 album offers a snapshot of the trio's first two years of activity, moving between reworkings, complex melodies, dazzling breakbeat flourishes, cartoonish samples, a sharp sense of rhythm, and already a strong display of compositional flair and creativity. Here, faster-paced tracks like the blistering “Hyperspeed (G-force Part II)” and “Ruff In The Jungle Bizness” alternate with perfect balances of groove and melodic sense, as in the opener “Jericho” and in already-familiar tracks, reinterpreted here in even more compelling, sped-up versions.

Although very fast tempos are particularly present here, the most singular and complete piece is perhaps the atmospheric “Weather Experience”, in which Liam perfectly crafts the fusion of its parts, delivering a small masterpiece. The live version of “Death Of The Prodigy Dancers” is a fitting conclusion, decidedly darker than the preceding tracks, perfectly balanced between a brooding, lysergic melody and a dizzying rhythm, all bolstered by an especially energetic vocal performance from Master of Ceremonies Maxim, who here has the merit of showing anyone who hadn't yet seen them live the energy that was already present in their earliest shows.

Fuck them and their law

“One Love” is perhaps not the most obvious track to capture the huge shift taking place in the rave scene between '92 and '94, but it's a transitional piece that would pave the way for the growing pessimism and distrust surrounding a dream - that of rave parties - which was being crushed under harsh laws targeting its followers. “How can the government stop young people having a good time? Fight these bollocks” is a line that appears in the artwork of the following album, and the single “One Love” itself carries, in its own artwork, a statement against the restrictions of the time.

The crisis of the rave scene, in a way, worked in the Prodigy's favour, because it allowed them to experiment with new forms, free from the criticism of purists - and that's exactly what happened shortly after, on a sprawling album that was radically different from Experience: Music For The Jilted Generation. Theirs was a "jilted generation" because it had grown up on false illusions of peace and serenity, all smiles and seemingly free - for one night and beyond - from the chains of government, the very same government that then pushed through harsher laws against rave parties.

Music For The Jilted Generation, from the very start, proves to be a completely different work compared to the debut album, because it presents new problems born out of the crisis within the movement, such as the return to the sad, grey reality of urban environments, alienation, psychosis and, as a consequence of this sense of betrayal, surrender to the vortex of synthetic drugs. Musically, this climate works in the band's favour, because every moment of rupture leaves more room for the creation of new structures, rising from the ashes of the previous ones, and the best example of this "new form" is "Their Law", which combines the synthetic, alienating sound of the synthesisers (far darker than in the past) with the physicality of Pop Will Eat Itself's rock. What emerges is an explosive mixture, from which the decay of the urban underworld oozes with force. Exemplary, in this respect, is the cult image featured in the album's booklet, which shows grey, Orwellian, metropolitan life set against the last lifeline of salvation, the (no longer so) peaceful dimension of the rave, the final foothold towards a freedom (which is, however, only fictitious, synthetic and nothing more). The raver is busy cutting the rope that allows the two worlds to join together, and this tear will never be mended again.

The video for "No Good (Start The Dance)" perfectly exemplifies the new direction taken by the rave scene. With the dream of a peaceful island far removed from harsh, alienating reality now a thing of the past, ravers had relocated to the bleak metropolitan outskirts of big cities, and the sound had grown ever less hopeful and joyful, moving away from genres like happy hardcore, now worlds apart from what it had been in 1990-93. Emblematic of this social shift within the subculture is the sample taken from "You're No Good For Me", a track by Kelly Charles, which goes: "You're no good for me, I don't need nobody/ don't need no one, that's no good for me". The change in the surrounding environment had also transformed the raver, who now lives out his own personal paranoia, immersed in dense breakbeat and underpinned by a cold, ecstatic melodic loop—no longer a social animal, no longer immersed in nature, but locked in a constant struggle with his own demons.

"Voodoo People" is, along with the aforementioned track, one of the songs that again tries to unite the betrayed youth, the magic people – voodoo people, a new generation of ravers drawn to the exotic and to the search for new doors of perception through new kinds of "aids". It's also one of their first tracks built from a collage of samples drawn from the popular music culture of the time (the opening riff is nothing other than the hook from "Very Ape" by Nirvana, suitably reworked). Another highlight that would go on to become one of their most famous classics is "Poison", which perfectly blends the synthetic, lysergic sound of the urban dimension with a more tribal, African-American feel. This track matters because, even more than "Their Law", it's the first song sung by Maxim in the studio, a sort of preview of the techno-rock evolution that would fully mature on their most beloved album ever, The Fat Of The Land.

It was only the year after the release of the Poison Ep, however, that The Prodigy would achieve global commercial success, thanks to a further musical revolution: a clever yet energetic and powerful crossover whose greatest achievement was building an ideal bridge between post-rave subculture and punk. With the definitive decline of early rave, danceable electronic genres took on a strongly recognizable identity, and, above all, under the banner of big beat, unexpectedly found themselves beyond the boundaries of niche scenes and subcultures, becoming an integral part of popular culture: "Firestarter", an anthem for a new generation played in heavy rotation virtually everywhere, was just one example among many.

Big Beat as a Mass Phenomenon

From mainstream radio to video games and film soundtracks, electronic music - and big beat in particular - ultimately became hugely popular genres. Besides Prodigy, the same fate befell other equally creative and, especially at the time, widely known English acts, such as Underworld with "Born Slippy", which featured on the soundtrack of "Trainspotting". Classic albums from that era - including "Vegas" by Crystal Method, "Surrender" by Chemical Brothers, "You've Come A Long Way Baby" by Fatboy Slim, "Dead Cities" by The Future Sound Of London, "Leftism" by Leftfield, "Getting High On Your Own Supply" by Apollo 440, plus, of course, the already mentioned The Fat Of The Land - ended up on the record shelves of countless kids, right next to albums by Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine, and NOFX.

Those years, as already mentioned, marked the console boom: the PlayStation, in fact, had come out just two years earlier, and plenty of kids bought several of the aforementioned records after hearing the tracks while playing Wipeout and its sequels. Often, too, these cult video games offered players the chance to compose their own tracks or listen to (electronic) music, and all these factors combined meant that the second half of the '90s was also the commercial peak, in terms of reach and sales, for this music - a phenomenon whose aftereffects are still visible today. The weight of electronic music within today's music industry is, in fact, beyond dispute. This was music that had captured a shift taking place within subcultures battered by drugs and hampered by restrictive laws, which were taking hits and retreating back into the underground they'd come from, while electronic music increasingly became synonymous with power and energy: electronic rock, essentially, and Prodigy were perhaps the clearest example of this shift.

Butter or guns: The Fat Of The Land and the band's huge commercial success

And then, one day, out of nowhere, came The Fat Of The Land. "Smack My Bitch Up", which became a full-blown generational anthem on a par with "Smells Like Teen Spirit", represented the quintessence of the melting pot the English duo (soon trio) had been crafting since their earliest years, but here the various elements were sliced up and sampled in an even more caustic, groovy way, adding to the mix a physical, driving, punk sound. "Smack" is born, once again, out of a blend of hip-hop, electronic music and rock/punk, fused seamlessly together across five minutes. Before being a vessel for ten potential hit singles, The Fat Of The Land was a turning point for this music, tearing down the boundaries between its reference genres. In "Smack", the RATM of "Bulls On Parade" coexist with Ultramagnetic MC's, and that's what matters most. Prodigy broke free from techno and its offshoots, which by then had started living a life of their own, both musically and (sub)culturally. Their music became energetic, built to unleash maximum impact live, and it must be said that this was their finest hour, one that for the first time took them touring all over the world.

"Breathe", "Diesel Power" (featuring Kool Keith), "Fuel My Fire" and all the other tracks - aside from the more reflective, "travel" cuts "Narayan" and "Climbatize" - follow the same coordinates, and even the band's look changed: more influenced by punk than by early rave.

Repeating an album like this one would have been very difficult, and Liam certainly showed the courage not to try, striking out in other directions. A fate shared by many big beat acts, the year 2000 proved to be a bogeyman that often put an end (at least temporarily) to many projects whose trademark had been exactly that melting pot, a blend that in the 21st century would lose a great deal of traction. Aware of this major shift (both musical and generational) under way, the English trio took a few years to think about which direction to take. That doesn't mean nothing worthwhile came from them until 2004 - quite the opposite: two years after the release of their most important album, Prodigy went back to being primarily a vehicle for Liam Howlett (also following the departure of Leeroy Thornhill, who found some success with his own projects Flightcrank and Hyper), the deus ex machina of the project and its sole composer, after Keith Flint and Maxim Reality had taken on the role of Masters of Ceremony on tracks like "Breathe", "Firestarter", "Serial Thrilla" and "Smack My Bitch Up", among others. It was indeed Liam who released a rather interesting work, The Dirtchamber Sessions Vol.1, a creative, kaleidoscopic and compelling mix that paid tribute to a huge range of artists more or less connected to the band's sound.

This was mainly Liam's intent: to make it clear, as difficult as that might be, that Prodigy weren't just the band behind "Firestarter", but had far more cards to play. Dirtchamber is an anthology, superbly mixed and thoroughly engaging, that evokes the sound of early hip-hop, funk and big beat, also folding in the seminal Meat Beat Manifesto and atmospheres reminiscent of Sergio Leone.

As already mentioned, around the same time Maxim worked on what he did best: hip-hop, and his debut solo record, "Hell's Kitchen" - which included the single written with Skin mentioned at the start of this article, titled "Carmen Queasy" - turned out to be something halfway between a tribute to street-level hip-hop and a kind of spin-off of what had been done on the band's previous album. Meanwhile, there was also room for a filler/B-side like "Baby's Got A Temper", which added nothing and took nothing away.

After the commercial boom

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned was, once again, a very different record from what had come before: on one hand it reworked some already well-established solutions, as in "Spitfire", but it also showcased, alongside the irresistible groove of "Girls", a markedly rock-oriented approach - a direction the English trio moved towards more and more forcefully (their current live shows are a clear example of this, with older tracks reinterpreted in an energetic, decidedly rock-oriented key). It was also a record released at a time when Liam felt completely cut off from the market, having survived the 2000 crisis, to the point of wisely deciding to strike out on new paths rather than emulate sounds that certainly wouldn't have won over 21st-century listeners anymore. A listener who, in those years, began drawing a sharp line between the club dimension, the rave dimension and the rock-concert dimension. This is the listener of the internet era, used to filing away every band into a category and therefore not particularly fond of blending genres. To tie back to the start of this piece, the listener of 2004 was one who put obsessive cataloguing and information ahead of experience, and it was perhaps this tendency that made an otherwise excellent record like AONO one of the least loved in their discography - even by Liam himself.

Invaders Must Die is an album that, once again, captured the shifts under way within electronic subcultures and that put forward, in its own personal way and always following a highly individual formula, new musical trends - including the Dubstep of "Thunder" - but which shone above all for the groove and modernity of tracks like "Invaders Must Die", and for its reinterpretation of their most powerful, frenzied and explosive material. It's no coincidence that, thanks to its modernity, it became one of the trio's most beloved works after The Fat Of The Land, partly because, in some ways, it seemed to follow in its footsteps.

The Prodigy of the 21st century are, in any case, artists now following their own path, largely detached from the context and electronic drifts of more recent generations and increasingly drawn towards a rock dimension - and this is perhaps why they have, without a doubt, lost that status as generational artists that had been so present during their first decade of activity.

Having become ever more creatures of the stage, in recent years the band have increasingly focused on the live dimension of their music, alternating limited editions, best-ofs and live albums/DVDs that further showcase their ability to captivate huge crowds. Now very far removed from any subcultural urgency (whatever that might be today), but without thereby lacking ideas (quite the opposite), Prodigy crafted with The Day Is My Enemy one of their finest albums, perhaps the most "complete" of their entire career alongside Music For The Jilted Generation, a showcase of mastery and enviable songwriting skill that, however, no longer captures the sociocultural and subcultural shifts under way within electronic music, mainstream or otherwise.

Tracks like "Nasty", "Rebel Radio", "Rok-Weiler" and "Rhythm Bomb" (this last one featuring Flux Pavilion), to name but a few, rank among the best they've ever written, but the reason for today's youth showing little interest in them lies in their detachment from the current landscape and their growing indifference towards a multitude of electronic subcultures that perhaps no longer represent them, too standardized compared to the wildly varied blend once put forward by Liam and his bandmates.

Part of the magical aura surrounding Prodigy's success has been the impossibility of fully grasping the possible offshoots of their music, which ended up getting them filed into fixed categories - a double-edged sword that has worked against them, especially within today's musical landscape. That said, Howlett has been, and still is, one of the most creative figures in mainstream electronic music, able to constantly reinvent himself and consistently deliver interesting results, never letting down the fans, old and new, of his project.

Returning to the concept of "experience", what was once the rave later became the concert, and the English proved it: two universes that, to today's listener, might seem like parallel and irreconcilable worlds, but which, in other eras and other contexts, were closer than one might think today.

Released after the move to BMG (and Howlett's earlier decision never to release album-format material again, swiftly retracted), No Tourists (2018) opens the dance with the classic example of a by-now well-established drift ("Need Some1"), in which all the ingredients of a dish already tasted a hundred times come together.The adrenaline is guaranteed, but the sequence of bloated beats takes up as much space on the record as the relative lack of interesting ideas does. At most, one can give Howlett and co. credit this time for the effort to make their sound, here and there, less triumphantly muscular, thanks to an expanded catalogue of tricks that manages to shape a homogeneous corpus, from which "We Live Forever", "Timebomb Zone" and the title track emerge in a positive light.

But that's not enough to leave a mark amid farcical episodes like the collaboration with Ho99o9 on "Fight Fire With Fire" (a title borrowed from Metallica) or the predictable drum and bass of "Champions Of London" and "Boom Boom Tap".

There's no room for tourists on Prodigy's latest record, and certainly none for the wind needed to steer the project out of the shallows of a self-satisfied stereotype.

Tragedy struck the Prodigy saga with the news of the death of Keith Flint, found dead at his home in Dunmow, Essex, at the age of 49. The most likely hypothesis according to investigators is suicide, but other possibilities remain open, such as an accident linked to alcohol and drug use.

Despite the weight the Prodigy carried in the "electronic revolution" that swept through the 90s, of which they were the figureheads, critics have often voiced dissent towards their music, mainly faulting them for failing to create anything truly new, and considerably downplaying their merit. But while it's true that what Liam and his bandmates expressed was certainly not their own invention, it is equally undeniable that the English band had the ability to bring to light ideas and experiments already carried out elsewhere, skilfully mixing the elements in such a way as to achieve worldwide success and change the history of electronic music.

Perhaps, as Simon Reynolds claimed in a moment of alarmism when "Charly" came out, the Prodigy "killed the rave", but more likely they brought its music to millions of people, and today rave parties and rave culture, though changed, still live on underground.

In any case, the Prodigy have gone down in the history of mass popular culture, an achievement that even the pioneers of their own ideas failed to reach, and therein lies their greatest accomplishment. "Smack My Bitch Up" and "Firestarter" are its emblems, still featured today in dj-set playlists, played in gyms, and used in radio ads.

Contributions by Paolo Ciro ("No Tourists")

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