As basis for the interviews a lot of the fan questions posted on the nekosite forum [HERE] were used, so a big thank you to everyone who posted.

MUNICH March 6th 2009 – Neko interviews Keith, Maxim, Liam

So, your album is at number 1, congratulations!

All: yeah, thanks!

Keith: It is easy to dismiss it but it is really respectful of all the guys still out there for us and are into it.

Liam: I am sure our fans are happy for us and we are happy for them that it is number 1. You know what I mean; it’s for everyone to be happy about… people who are into the band want [it to be number 1]. If no one bought the records then people wouldn’t be into us. It is kind of a hard thing to go “Yeah yeah we’re really excited we’re number one”. We are like feeling like we’re coming from the underdog angle. People totally wrote us off in the UK. Not fans but a fucking general negative vibe in the air.

Keith: It is never a goal [to be number 1] you just want to be heard and that is it!

Maxim: It is funny I was just saying to Liam at the airport “It is really weird I’ve never really thought about being number 1”. Yeah, it is respectful but never really analyzed it and really thought about it.

Keith: It is not about that. When you look back at having done Australia and then having done these gigs [European Tour] and the sort of progression, maybe since we did Gatecrasher and Warriors Dance and what that moment seemed to turn in to, how it gelled the album and the live show. I reflect on that and that feels awesome.
You must have seen it yourself that there is that kind of energy back. It is not just people coming to see their favourite band; it is people coming to fucking rock again! That just sets me alight!

So, it’s more the live show then, where you actually see the feedback, rather than an album being number 1 on the chart?

Keith: Correct!

Maxim: Australia was like, “fucking hell man!”

Liam: ‘Cause Australia was, it led into it as the album was released.

Keith: See that was pre-album. People were really getting the music as it happened.

Liam: I don’t think we we’ve ever been in a situation before, of starting the tour as the album is coming out. It has been a different experience.

Keith: Yeah, it’s been buzzing!

The album is called ‘Invaders Must Die’. Where did that come from?

Liam: It is definitely first of all a statement of intent, like most Prodigy records. On a ground level really abrasive and really sets the head thinking “What the fuck is that about?”. Which I think any good album title should do; but it is much deeper than that.
Its kinda biographical of the last 8 years , the rough period we went through, the pre “Baby’s got a temper” time. You know, we were reflecting back on that, talking about it 2 years ago one of the guys said ‘those Invaders Must Die’ referring to the infiltrators, and I was like that’s the album title right there.

Keith: The people that did more to help things disband than to bring things together. Negativity. They’re the invaders.

Maxim: All the negativity, it’s disbanding all the negativity. It is people who spread negativity and all the things which hold us back from where we are now.

Liam: It probably means something different to each one of us. It is definitely a bit of paranoia in there. Maybe times when you feel like in your head things aren’t quite going right.

Keith: Yeah, definitely! I was thinking about how the band has a really good subliminal way… when people ask you about causing controversy or how did you make this happen… We never think about anything in real literal kind of like “IT-list” kind of like…. “Abrasive – check! Controversy – check!” We never do that.

Liam: It is quite a positive album. We didn’t set up like, …. And it sounds really shit when you explain it and that’s why I don’t really like explaining it, sort of the songs, you can’t really pinpoint stuff.

But ‘Colours’ is kind of almost like a call to the troops. It has a positive message behind it. The whole album is more ‘up’ than we thought it would be. It took us by surprise ourselves. We weren’t trying to make an ‘up’ record. We think it feels quite ‘up’.

Maxim: It is the excitement of being in the studio and doing the shows and being together again. We are closer than ever. And I think that just comes through and shines through the tracks on the record.

You said that on the last album ‘Spitfire’ was the defining track of the record and before that ‘Firestarter’. Is there like a defining track on this album?

Liam: I don’t think we know yet. We didn’t know at the beginning when we did those records. But I like ‘Take Me To The Hospital’. Fuck knows!

Maxim: Yeah! That seems to be standing out more and more.

Liam: And ‘Warriors Dance’ obviously.

Keith: ‘Warriors Dance’ is a trigger track. I saw Liam really have a freedom in the studio and he was writing like Liam wrote, he was just writing and spilling out ideas.

Liam: It was a mixture of that and moving upstairs where all the baggage had been just dropped off.

Keith: And all the shit stayed at the bottom and all the good went out at the top and then we just had to condense it.

Liam: The studio is really small. It’s this big [shows in relation to the small room we’re in] It is like an old bedroom.

Maxim: But while we’re talking about standout tracks, on the previous albums there were some stand out tracks and some tracks that worked on different levels but I think on this album all the tracks are on the same level.

Your online presence is much more intense nowadays. Facebook and Myspace and you’ve done blogs and things like that.

Keith: I don’t. I’ve done a couple of blogs, I think.

Liam: I am on the blog. I think what it was, to summarize it, we’ve decided at the beginning, before Facebook and that fucking nonsense, that we would take Duggers, he’s our film guy, on the road with us more.
Because we really liked him as he is really fun to hang out with and he was a photographer and we thought we’d just take him along to take some snaps and all that. And then we started to make the little films. And that just came out of nowhere; we didn’t say “c’mon lets make some films” he was just our friend and he just started making some films. And we thought like “cool, we’ll put one online” so that kind of started the communication and we really got into that thing.

Keith: I personally thought it was good communication, because I don’t blog. And I wish I did – I got to make a statement that it is not disrespectful to the fans, it is just not what I do well. And I think if I got into it I’d probably fuck it up somehow so I must stay away.

Maxim: It is important, you know from our previous web sites and stuff, to stay in contact with our fans and kind of move on with times rather than just go “fuck it, website is over there” and leave it alone.

Liam: Yeah you got to make the effort!

Keith: I am certainly behind all the films and keeping the momentum of that going.

Maxim: Obviously there are fans out there who are into what we’re doing so it is just keeping them in touch, you know.

Liam: But I’m really really also on making sure that it doesn’t go too far the other way where it feels like too corporate. It doesn’t at the moment, but we got to keep it like [cool]… I just go on it when I can be arsed.

Keith: We always talk about things we could do for our fans but then we kind of back it up a bit and we’re not Radiohead or Coldplay, where you’re kind of giving your album away and free tickets and you could choose what clothes I wear. [laughter] That is just never gonna happen. I’ve got a spare room, fan of the week that lives in the spare room and really I am in touch [laughter].

Maxim: [joking] well, I would actually set that up, you know, for a couple of grand. I wouldn’t actually tell you about it. [laughs]

Liam: Yeah, it is finding the right balance isn’t it.

You did the radio show on Radio 1. I thought that was really good!

Maxim: That was alright.

Keith: We enjoyed it.

Liam: I fucking shit it…. It was scary. The first 15min I was like “oh no!”.

I remember you talking about it on the UK tour in December and what you were going to do on it…

Liam: Yeah…after about 20 minutes it was alright, wasn’t it!

Maxim: I loved it!

Liam: We did have a laugh! I must say, Pete Tong helped us out and he was really good.

Keith: Did you hear the Damon Albarn one?

Liam: No! Did you?

Keith: No, I was just wondering how it was.

Liam: He is probably pretty good at that sort of shit, he’s a librarian. I am not really good at public speaking, so it was funny.

Maxim: Nor am I!

So what happened to that competition that you guys promised? [When live on the radio 1 show]

Liam: Yeah, we were talking about that.

Maxim [laughs]

Keith: It is still running! The thing was, what happened there was…

Liam: I was drunk!

Keith: Liam was drunk, and then we bumped into some law about radio gaming and all that gaming stuff.

Liam: Competition!

Keith: Yeah, competition.

Liam: The producer was like “No, No! We can’t do competitions on Radio 1! We’re not allowed to do that”

Keith: We’re sourcing the information we need to pick a winner at the moment.

Liam: No, we haven’t even asked the question yet have we?! I thought we are still going to do that.

Keith: I thought it was name the tour!

Liam: If we give the 303 away, they have to take all my shit out away from my attic! It comes with all those boxes!

Keith: It is in a box… covered in shit! [laughter]

Liam: They have to take everything! Haha

Keith: Old toys, clothes, furniture and lamps and records and broken stereos!

So what do you guys listen to at the moment?

Liam: I listen to a lot of dance music. Just music in general.

Keith: I am a shuffle man. Ipod shuffle! I must admit, every ten tracks I go “what the fuck is this? I didn’t know I had that!” and I love that. Cause it makes it to your ipod for a reason and it is in the right bracket or genre or whatever. So that is what I do.

Maxim: Old school hip-hop man; that is where it is for me!

Keith: Whilst we were doing the album there was a little time, that I would ring Liam and tell him to check this track and he’d do the same. It was a sort of track sharing of stuff that was going on.

Liam: Maybe I am more in contact with the freshest shit on the dance side of things. When Deadmau5 first came out I was really into that. ‘The Spell’ that track is fucking wicked. And Noisia. You know, they did the remix of Omen.

Keith: Cool guys actually. We met them yesterday.

Liam: That kind of whole ‘noise’ shit happened. Like more dark electronic dance shit that is really good. And even drum’n’bass… I’ve never really been into drum’n’bass before. There have always been key tracks but… I just really like it again. It has really got up another level I reckon. It is more like a production thing. I am more listening to the production. Drums sounds and the way bass works. Cause we can all learn from each other still.

Before Christmas I saw you say in an interview that you’ve got to finish some tracks that didn’t make it on the album…

Liam: There is lots and lots of stuff left over from the record. Some people have heard it. The obvious one is ‘Mescaline’ and, what else, ‘AWOL’ which people haven’t heard. It is probably an album worth of stuff that hasn’t made it on the album, which some of it needs to be finished.

People probably still want to hear ‘Dead Ken’. None of these tracks are going be saved for a new record. They need to come out before we start on the new album because you have to start fresh, you know. Whatever the singles three and four are, that is going to be a good opportunity to stick on some of those tracks.

Do you know what the next singles will be?

Liam: ‘Warriors Dance’ is next! But people already know that, yeah?

Maxim: Is it? [Laughs]

Liam: But for single three we’re still thinking about that. We like ‘Take Me To The Hospital’. And I could remix that as well, so I am kind of looking forward to doing a good remix of that tune.

What about ‘Thunder’ …

Liam: Yeah ‘Thunder’ is a single track. The singles pick themselves for this record. As we were writing it, we knew that was fucking strong. We want to play ‘Thunder’ [live] at some point. We are doing ‘Colours’ tonight [Munich]. Doing a tour like this, it is a good opportunity to try out little bits and pieces. Like we’re really enjoying doing ‘Comanche’ at the moment.

Maxim: Tiring! [laughs]

I really love ‘Run With The Wolves’ as well. To me it has similar vibe that ‘Warning’ had. It is kind of taking it up to that next level.

Keith: Yeah yeah.

Liam: I’m glad you say that, because I think it is much stronger than ‘Warning’. Warning was one of those tracks that we were playing around with for a long time and it did actually get better didn’t it.

Keith: Yeah, it did! You need to believe in the track like… take the doubt out of it. I love doing ‘Run [with the wolves]’. Like I said to Liam earlier on, I can’t change, am I not growing up? Because I can’t not just buzz off that. I just want to just submerge myself into the people, and get stamped to death by them…and that’s my everything…

Liam: I think where ‘Warning’ was going originally it never quite got there. And we were still talking about how it could make it on the album but then it was like “naah…”

Keith: [about ‘Run with the Wolves’] I mean when that riff drops… It’s just insane!

Liam: I remember being in the studio when I wrote that tune [Run with the wolves] and it is like the whole tune was finally done but I was still looking for the bit… you know, Dave had done the drums and I got the drums sounding pretty good, but I still had that riff, that da da da da da….

Keith: You were doing some riffs. And then you kind of had a riff didn’t you. Then I left, and I went back to the flat.

Liam: I think I texted you “oh man, I’ve got the riff now”

Keith: Yeah yeah, then the next minute I am listening to it, down the phone.

Liam: I had two studios at that stage. I have the small studio, which is my main studio and then there was the old, bigger studio which was downstairs. I was like, I am going to pop upstairs and I was like “no the riff is still not fucking right, it doesn’t have the fucking energy”. And then I went up and wrote that and as soon as I finished it I was like “oh man that is fucking… yeah that is it!”

Keith: Yeah, it was just like “fucking hell, when this goes live – ferocious!”

Liam: That is what we always wanted ‘Warning’ to be. So I am happy about that.

Colours was the first track that you did for this album. To me when I first heard it was the one that reminded me the most of ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’…

Liam: Yeah, I agree!

Keith: Yeah!

Liam: ‘Colours’ was written in the time, the latter part of the last wave of the band. It was written when were sort of thinking more about songs. Right at the beginning, and it was the first track we’ve finished.

Keith: It was written on the guitar wasn’t it? We were searching for new ways of writing and it became a song but then we stripped it back. Fuck, we’re doing it tonight, I just remembered. [laughs]

On ‘Omen’ the vocals are quiet different to your previous vocals – they are more singing. How did that come about?

Liam: Maxim just pulled that out of the bag. It was like a completely new thing. I think Keith was happy but I was like “whatever happens on this record we should try and not lose what we had before”. It was really important that Keith is being Keith on the record and Maxim is being Maxim. But let’s try to up it a bit and see where it goes. Yeah, I think lots of people were surprised by it. It is much more melodic. You know, the new album has room for it, it can’t just be one thing can it?

Keith: Absolutely not.

Liam: We debated for a long time whether that should be the first single or not. Because we’ve done ‘Invaders’ and that to us was never a single. We just wanted to give that away as a download. That was not meant to be seen as like the first single. First single is ‘Omen’. That is the one we are launching our record off! But ‘Invaders’ got the name out there more than anything else you know. We debated for ages whether it should be ‘Take Me To The Hospital’ or ‘Omen’. Even up to the last stage I was still like “Hmm I don’t know”. But it seems to have set the pace alright.

You’ve done a live video for it, which I thought worked really well.

Keith: Yeah. Because we’ve been doing the films with Duggers it just felt like… for the fans it would sort of feel like the progression of that.

Liam: It captured it really well. The energy of Brixton. I am not a great fan of live videos personally. But we made the decision to do it and it rolled off from all the live things we did with Duggers. I think it was cool to do.

Keith: So little bits and little spin offs. It shows the band as the band is known. That is all the part of the album.

Liam: It is important to remind people that it is the three of us! So that did that job well.

And you said earlier something about two versions of Omen?

Liam: Yeah, basically, the way I was writing this album, it wasn’t like I did for Fat of The Land, where it was like, wrote a tune, finished it, next. With this record, I wrote something, got a bit bored of it, wrote something else. And, that was the way a lot of the tracks were recorded, I had these different ideas.
And originally, ‘Omen’ was on a completely different piece of music. It was on a – it would be interesting actually to put that old version up, because it is completely different. It’s got the same vocal in it, but it’s got a different key to the music. But we really liked the vocal. When we got towards the end, sort of three quarters through the record, I was like “I really like this vocal and I could see what the actual tune had to sound like”.

And then ‘Stand Up’ was a complete surprise. I remember when I first heard it I was like “what?”!

Liam: Yeah we wanted to…

Keith: On that note I am leaving! [laughter] I can just ‘stand up’ and go because that is what it was written for. [Keith has to leave to get ready for the gig]

Liam: When we used to go out in the rave scene the DJ would always play like… the music would always stop and people would go like “one more tune!” and he would always play something slower or totally different and kind of uplifting cause he wanted people to leave on a high. ‘Stand Up’ was originally written as instrumental for maybe a vocal collaboration for the record. Then we realized we weren’t going do any collaborations vocally. Because the album was a band album, you know what I mean?
And then I just saw this as a really different way to end the album. You know things like ‘Narcotic Suite’, there is always something on the album which maybe is different and people don’t expect. ‘Weather Experience’, ‘Narcotic Suite’ and I guess this is that one. We’ll probably never do it live – that is why we play it at the end. The DJ plays it as we walk off. I am expecting a lot of people not to like it – but that is half the fun of it!

MUNICH March 6th 2009 – Neko interviews Liam

You said in an Australian interview that you “probably wasted a lot of time at the beginning working with another producer” and that it was a “complete waste of time”.

Liam: And you want to know who that is?

Yeah!

Liam: Jagz! He is a good friend of mine so I am not disrespecting him but me and Jagz were talking about… I respected him from the Primal Scream stuff he’d done and I’ve known about his production for a long time. John [Fairs] was friends with him. And he was like “man, get Jagz in – he is really into what you’re doing”. And it was just one of those things where we were just like “Wow this is going to be fucking great”.
It looked good on paper, but it just didn’t work. It was pretty much a waste of time for about month and half, when we were just trying to make it work but it just didn’t came together. He is a good guy but it was just another one of those things that made me think “I am doing this on my own now”.
At the beginning of the record we didn’t want to fall into the old track – we wanted to be really open and maybe get, no one well known, but get a guitarist in, get maybe different people in and trying to record some shit and just do something different. When really it is down to the drums and the bass – old school! That is what we get excited about.

So has your approach in the studio actually changed or has it kind of gone back to how you worked before?

Liam: Came back right to the beginning. I’ve got round in a complete circle.

So you’re done with the whole Reason thing?

Liam: Oh no! For the geeks I use Logic, Ableton Live and Reason all plugged in together through one computer. I think I am able now to bin an idea if it ain’t working… whereas before like couple of years ago I went through a period where I would really try to make something work and force it. Now I think in my headspace I could see if it is going to work and if it didn’t work throw it away – and get a new idea straight away! And not dwell on an old idea too much.

Obviously your attitude to the online has changed quite a lot – are you getting more comfortable now playing and trying stuff live? Because I know you were a bit paranoid about it.

Liam: Yeah I think I was for a bit. But I think that was more to do with the time of the band. I don’t think we were… with the ‘Always Outnumbered’ album it was quiet turbulent. Before that, me and Keith weren’t speaking. We did sort of like work our way through it. When ‘AONO’ was released and we did that first set of gigs on the back of that record, it was totally cool. We were back to normal and it was fine. I just didn’t really like the fact that I couldn’t just try a beat out and people would rip it apart. Whereas now I don’t give a fuck – I am back to that. That is the way it should be.

Because a lot of stuff is now on YouTube and I know you have this company ‘Web Sheriff‘ looking into this all too…

Liam: Yeah, the record company brought that in. Because, people have to understand, we signed to a new label, Cooking Vinyl are a small label. We went through the whole major [label] thing and a couple of majors were after us. And it was a weird time, because I didn’t have really much of an album together when we were looking for a record deal. And I was always on like “XL were a fucking brilliant label, we needed to find another label that’s at least as half as good as them”.

And actually Cooking Vinyl, and what they’re about now, they are just as good as them, they’re fucking brilliant. The way we’ve brought this record out, everything is on par if not better, than with XL.

But Cooking Vinyl are responsible for the web sherriff thing, because they put everything into this album. They didn’t want anything fucking it up. They had literally put their whole company on the line to do this album, which we’ve got so much respect for. It’s the biggest thing they have ever done.

But I think a lot of people liked the way the web sherriff people were working – they were working with the fans, you know. Which is cool, it wasn’t like “we are going to sue your ass, take that down!”. That’s not cool.

And you’ve now obviously got your own label under Cooking Vinyl, have you signed anyone yet?

Liam: No, not yet. I’m talking to a couple of people, or one set of people specifically. But I’m not sure yet whether that’s right or not. I didn’t plan to do anything at all until the album is finished. But, I think we’re definitely going to start thinking about it.

What kind of artists are you thinking of? Similar to you, or totally different?

Liam: Somebody who can represent the label, but…it doesn’t have to be electronic, but it has to be really different, with potential!

Would you think about producing them as well?

Liam: Me? Nah, I wouldn’t do a Puff Daddy, definitely not! Ideally it would come as a full package. It’s weird, you know, taking on a bit of an A&R man type of role. That’s not really what I want to do. But hopefully people might find a bit of value in my opinion…If they want me to be involved in some of the production then maybe that would be good, but I’m not saying I’d have to.

A lot of your fans are also into making music themselves….

Liam: Yeah, the future is out there, isn’t it, it’s out there somewhere!

Do you check out bands on MySpace and stuff?

Liam: Yeah, all the time, all the time.

One suggestion from the people who posted on the nekosite forum was for you to do a remix competition; is this something you would consider doing?

Liam: Yeah, I am really up for that! Really up for that …. It’s just that at the moment, because we’ve literally been on the road since Australia, I haven’t actually even been to the studio. It would involve me going to the studio and maybe get some of the parts and putting them up for people to download, which is definitely what we should do.
What track do you think would be good?

Maybe a next single?

Liam: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good idea, I think, just give people the a capella, vocals and just a couple of the key elements.

I’m up for it! I am going to say now that I am going to do that, it would work for ‘Take Me To The Hospital’.

How do you guys plan out the live shows?

Liam: The order of the songs is really important. We were talking about it tonight…like, how many songs can we play of the new record. Because there is nothing worse than going to see a band with a new album out and all they play is the new stuff, you know. So it was about finding the right balance, so we’re figuring that out. We’re definitely going to try ‘Colours’ out tonight, and we’re definitely going to play ‘Thunder’ at some point over the next four gigs, you know. But it might even be the last one, but it might even be tomorrow.

We dropped Spitfire now! It’s hard to keep everyone happy – but as long as we are, it’s alright, he he.

The set obviously can’t keep getting longer, so, we look at the tunes, and have to decide. ‘Comanche’, for example, does something different, that no other song does. It’s got something different, a different kind of rhythm, a different kind of feel. Whereas Spitfire, for me, kind of felt like halfway through it was going a bit flat…. It might come back at some point, but for the moment we’re not playing it anymore.

And you’ve stopped playing ‘Out of Space’ at the last few shows as well…

Liam: Yeah, we are going to bring that back.

Basically, we want to use this smaller European tour also as a bit of a testing ground. People may not like that, but that’s the way it is.

So how is the touring going?

Liam: Love it, absolutely amazing… I mean, Australia was like a big holiday, all spaced out. This is like a proper tour, we’re on a tour bus, you know, we’re doing 3 or 4 gigs in a row, one day off, 3 or 4 gigs, you know, that’s pretty hard core. But it’s good, it’s really good. The band is really on top of each other, we have a laugh on the bus. That’s cool. In Australia, I would stay in my room sometimes all day and not see anybody! I’d be happy to just chill and watch a film.

So how do you guys get fit for a tour?

Liam: I’ve got into running recently! I like to party at night and run in the morning. It sorts my head out.

What do you listen to when you do?

Liam: Ricky Gervais pod cast!

People know I do like drinking – so I still like partying, but I really like running now. So as soon as I get up I go running, at home. I tend not to run on tour. But when I’m at home, it just sets my head up.
But you know, Keith, he completely stopped drinking or doing any kind of drugs for about a year now, so I mean, for him, in his head, the band is everything to him! So for him to enjoy it, he has to be in peak performance. But that’s just him, Keith just does the extreme.

You’ve said before that you often do a lot of tracks at the back of the live shows, after you come off stage. Does that happen on this tour?

Liam: Yeah, I’ve got lots of tracks in the studio, definitely about 4 or 5 tracks that I really like that need to be finished. So what I’m going to do, when I go back to the studio, I will get all the parts and put them on my laptop, so I can work on the road. So maybe when we’re going to be on the UK tour, or some other gigs, maybe I can just try a few things out, you know.

So, I will have to ask about that Unkle Remix of No Souvenirs…

Liam: James [Lavelle] is a good friend of mine. I spoke to him the other day actually, but I haven’t seen him in a couple of years. But, you know, James was good friends with Rob, 3D [Massive Attack]. I probably gave him the parts, but I can’t actually remember us ever saying “Yeah we’re going to do something with it, use it”. He basically did, somehow it was out there. But his mix is fine, it’s got nothing to do with what we did, it’s completely different. So I mean, maybe fans should just forget about the track…and then it might pop up [laughs].
I don’t know….It’s had to much build up now!

I told you I’d play it to you, didn’t I! I will do that, and then you’ll probably be like: “oh, ok, that’s alright…”

It’s quite a song…it’s more of a song for us. You know as soon as it gets to ‘songy’, it gets on quite weird ground with us. It’s like ‘Omen’, ‘Omen’ is just on the right edge…so I don’t know about ‘No Souvenirs’. And plus, ‘No Souvenirs’ is a collaboration between me and Rob. So it is a bit less of a Prodigy tune, you know.

What’s with the recurring Fire themed songs, are you trying to get one into every album now?

Liam: [laughs] Yeah! It’s our own kind of laugh… it seems to happen by accident. Cause the World’s on Fire vocal [sings the vocal], I didn’t pick it because it had the word fire in it, I picked it because I liked the sample. And it was just by accident and we were like “fucking hell, can’t believe we’ve got another ‘fire’ in it!”. We seem to be drawn towards that.

We haven’t talked about ‘Warriors Dance’ yet, I really like that track live. I think it was the first one you played live. Was that consciously, kind of looking back to the old days?

Liam: Yeah. The thing is, it was written…. We’d done ‘Colours’…and ‘Colours’ isn’t the defining moment of the album, it’s a good track but it’s not the defining track of the album. We’d done ‘Colours’ and we’d done a couple of other demos that didn’t make it on the album. So ‘Warriors Dance’ was really the first thing that really got us excited. It was also quite a bit of time in. We had Gatecrasher coming up, and Keith was like “Listen, forget about the album for a bit, we need a new track to play live”. And so I started listening to a lot of old records, you know like Renegade Soundwave and that.

So yeah, we got really energised by that early sound. And then I thought the baseline was more now sounding, but the beats were more old skool. But it felt really fresh, it felt much fresher than any other tune we’d done. So it was like “this doesn’t feel at all retro, this feels just really exciting”. Like that… so that was good. And it wasn’t actually meant to be on the record, but then we just listened to it and we were like, yeah, it has to be. And it really reminded us what we were about, but we didn’t want it to be a retro thing. We just liked that for that one moment we could go yeah, bang!

Do you think maybe doing the Greatest Hits thing before kind of helped you get to that point?

Liam: Yeah, yeah, I think maybe a bit. It definitely got us in the mode to go into the studio with the want to make a record, you know. Fucking ready to do this.
Because doing a ‘hits’ album and a tour, is kind of a false sense of security. Just because you’ve sold a few of those albums doesn’t mean that you’ve still got the potential to come back and still write another good record, you know, these records have already been out, so it’s just reminding people about them again. It wasn’t like completely new versions that we reinvented ourselves. It’s always about the latest record, so we weren’t under any illusion that we were ‘back’. We hadn’t gone anywhere, but what I’m trying to say we now proved ourselves again.

But what that did that whole tour, it really brought us back together.

ZURICH March 9th 2009 – Neko interviews Liam

So…. You played ‘Colours’ in Munich. But you haven’t played it since…

Liam: Yeah. So basically like, you know when an album can’t be all the same thing so the album is made up of like a journey, so like, ‘Invaders’ didn’t work when we first played it, I didn’t think, and you might have noticed I’ve manipulated it into a bit more of a rocking tune now that sort of fits along with everything else.

And so, on the album ‘Colours’ seems to sit, and really works as a song. But for me it feels like I could…it didn’t set my world on fire straight off as a dynamic live tune.

It’s kind of like pretty straight up, quite punk rock sort of straight, quite linear do you know what I mean, whereas something like ‘Run’ for example, has lots of builds and drops and kind of very dynamic. So I think that some Prodigy tunes sort of arrive on the stage, like perfect do you know what I mean? Once I rearrange it and do a live version it will work. That’s my honest opinion.

Yes. Do you think you’re still going to play ‘Thunder’ on this tour, because you were talking about it?

Liam: Thunder’s nearly ready! It will probably be Paris or New York. Which you’re probably not going to, New York, are you?

I’m going to Miami though.

Liam: Are you really? Oh we’ll definitely play it by then. 100%.

Cool. I’m coming over just to see Thunder then.

Liam: [Laughing] Yeah right.

Are there any tracks on ‘Invaders Must Die’ that you’re definitely not going to play live?

Liam: Erm, maybe ‘Stand Up’ we won’t play live, which you’re probably happy about. No I think Stand Up’s got a good position where it is [played after the concert is finished], you know, so that’s the only one I think. I know Maxim wants to try ‘Piranha’ soon.

You changed ‘Diesel Power’ around a little bit on the last shows.

Liam: Yeah. Do you want to hear the story behind that?

Yeah.

Liam: So, I’m on the internet looking around YouTube and stuff and I come across this bootleg of ‘Diesel Power’ and Pain. I don’t know anything about this Pain ‘Shut Your Mouth’ do you know that?
So, I don’t know who they are, nothing about them they’re like a rock band, I think they’re like a Euro rock band. It’s Pain – ‘Shut Your Mouth’ the record’s called. If you check it out on YouTube you’ll hear that riff at the beginning. Anyway so I was checking it out on the internet and I found this bootleg of ‘Diesel Power’ and ‘Pain’ that someone had just smashed it together, so I thought it was really, really cool so I basically bootlegged my own bootleg, yeah?

Which is kind of cool I think because it shows the throw away-ness and the cut and paste-ness which is still important to the band you know.

Do you have any special plans for the UK arena tour that you’re doing?

Liam: Erm, yes. [pauses] Next question. [Laughing]

We’re going to have a few surprises, we’re going to play, …I’ve gotta try and find it but we’ve got a classic that people won’t expect us to play we’re gonna draw up from the vaults. That should be good. But I can’t tell you more than that.

You’ve got Dizzee Rascal supporting.

Liam: Yeah!

Because usually you’ve got more up and coming bands that aren’t really known.

Liam: Yeah, but usually they are more smaller tours aren’t they, and so if we were doing like a Brixton or something like that maybe we would have had smaller bands ….
Dizzee ok, so basically, we can draw lots of comparisons with Dizzee because basically, he’s come from a scene, and he’s come out of it and he’s sort of had to be creative on his own, to sort of carry on with what he’s doing. And I think he’s faced a lot of the same sort of issues as we did when we first come out of the scene, out of our scene you know.

So I think, we kind of respect him for what he’s done and, I don’t know we just thought it was a good…I mean we all love ‘Sirens’ that tune you know? And ‘Old Skool’ as well and we just thought it was a good alternative like really different thing to put on for us you know? You know we don’t usually, we never normally have sort of something more urban based. But, I think we all really like Dizzee. For sure.

And then there was a rumour about us saying we were going to do a collaboration with him which I don’t know where that came from. I think I might have said it then the next thing it was in the papers. [Laughs]

What’s the last band you’ve seen live?

Liam: erm [pauses] it was either, the Arctic Monkeys or [thinks] Arctic Monkeys yeah, yeah.

Was it good?

Liam: Yeah, mega. It was in Australia. Alex Turner is one of those creative people along with Jack White who are fucking special. Just pure talent. I saw loads of bands in Australia, yeah it was good.

And you’ve remixed this Oasis track ‘Falling Down’.

Liam: Yeah!

How did that come about, because it’s like the first remix you’ve done since 1995 [Method Man - Release Yo‘ Delf]?

Liam: Noel [Gallagher] asked me to do it when their album first came out but I was right in the middle of my record, so I couldn’t do it then and I said “Ask me later on and I will sort it out”. ‘Cause I liked the tune.

And then he asked me just as I’m about to leave to go to Australia, I’m like I’m not going to be in the studio so I’m going to have to do it on the road. I carry the laptop around with me so I busted it out in the hotel room.

Yeah, I enjoyed doing it I mean my main aspect for it was I didn’t want to make it into a dance record I really like the song. And so I wanted to keep the song structure and just move it into like, a different sort of sonic area do you know what I mean, just make it much harder, make it less smooth, without losing the song there.

Do you think you’re going to do any other remixes?

Liam: Absolutely. I mean, it’s something I’m definitely doing, I’ve had like 3 or 4 requests off the back of the Oasis thing straight off so, you know, yeah definitely. I like ripping into other people’s tunes.

Cool. On the album you’ve got ‘Warrior’s Dance’ and there’s like this link after it, what is it, where is it from?

Liam: [Laughing] That’s erm, that’s me in Finsbury Park, Ghost Train yeah!

I was trying to get … I was walking through Finsbury Park fairground, with my dictaphone trying to get sort of like atmosphere for the record, and just kind of maybe some cool noises and stuff when I passed this ghost train and this siren went off .
And I went up to the guy “Can you put the siren on?”. He goes “No Mate. You’ve got to go on the ghost train.”

I was like “Ah fucking hell!” Got on the ghost train. I was actually with Liam G [Gallagher] at the time. So we, both of us got on this ghost train and [Laughs], I started to record it. And as we went through the doors, the siren went off behind me and the fucking doors shut like… and it’s all on the actual Dictaphone but I didn’t put it on the record but the actual original tape was really funny. It’s me and Liam going through this ghost train for about a minute with all these ghosts jumping out at us and stuff. And then when I got back round I said to the guy “You didn’t put the fucking siren on, where’s the siren?” and he’s like, “Oh, you paid your money” and then he put it on so….yeah.

Do you think you’re going to have a different mix of ‘Warriors Dance’ for the single, like you had for ‘Omen’?

Liam: I tried to do a different version of it, with different drums and it didn’t come out as good, and so I made the decision just to stick with the original because it just wasn’t, it wasn’t as good you know? In the beginning I thought it was alright, it was kind of, it was taking it at a different angle but then once I’ve put them side by side the original sounded much more exciting so that’s the version but we’ve had some remixes done.

What about ‘Dead Ken’? [as a potential B-Side]

Liam: Yeah, that’s way off yet but I’m thinking the next single is going to feature definitely one of these tunes I have sitting around.

Because when we were in Munich you said that you’ve got about an albums worth of stuff that didn’t make it on the album , would you at all consider putting any of the stuff just online?

Liam: Absolutely yeah. None of this stuff will roll over to a possible next album or anything. That’s it for now, so, you know, absolutely 100% we will do that you know, for sure. Haha, you know me and my promises!

There’s some good tunes there though you know, it’s like – I did this wicked tune. It was going to be a collaboration with another vocalist, and I got Martina [Topley-Bird] in who used to be with Tricky to do this kind of Ella Fitzgerald vocal that I sampled. She was fucking amazing. She just sung these couple of lines but that wasn’t the collaboration, it was another vocalist that was with her on that tune but it works with just her vocal.

What’s it called?

Liam: The working title is ‘The Day’s My Enemy’.

And any kind of unreleased tracks that you’ve got from when you were signed to XL (Recordings) do XL have the rights to those or are you going to be able to release those?

Liam: There’s not many left to be honest there’s only ‘No Souvenirs’. Yeah I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. ‘We Eat Rhythm’ I suppose is still knocking around. I mean if I actually went through all the stuff in the studios there’s probably loads and loads of stuff but, nothing worth, nothing that I think worth, you know?

There’s a lot more material around now writing this record than there was before. Yeah, for sure. I’m still finding tracks that are sort of half done that I’m finding now that I think are still really good you know? It’s weird. They’re just missing one element or something do you know what I mean?

How do you keep old stuff you’ve got, do you back things up or do you just leave it lying around?

Liam: No [laughing] it’s just lying around.

Keith was really distressed, he was like, when we were doing the record he kept coming in, he goes “Remember that tune you were doing? Oh it was fucking amazing I’ve got a lyric for it!”.

I was like “No what was it?” and he’s like “Yeah you know the one that goes…” and he tried to sing the beat or whatever, the riff, I’m like “Nah I don’t know”.

So I’d spend about two hours looking through all these hundreds of bits of shit I’d started. So no, I try and sort of keep them in some sort of order now, yeah.

I’ve got about, I’d say, I’ve got roughly eight really good ideas that maybe didn’t work on the record but could be definitely good B-sides or live tracks.

What are your stand out moments in your career so far, because it is 20 years now, almost isn’t it?

Liam: Stand out moments. I don’t know, this has been pretty good this [referring to current European tour] you know, because we’ve come from so many problems in the band you know?

I mean, you know this, obviously the whole ‘Baby’s Got a Temper’ sort of period is like, you know, it’s pretty much documented, and sort of all the problems with me and Keith, him sort of doing his solo thing and all that type of shit caused a lot of problems so, I mean, actually being able to rebuild, the whole thing up from that again, it’s been really cool. But I mean yeah the obvious things like the gigs like Moscow and some of the special gigs we did earlier on, Beirut you know. And you know the first gig was fucking amazing, ‘Labyrinth’.

I mean even real personal things like being in the studio and then suddenly coming up with the right vocal for a tune you know. Like me and Keith in the studio when we wrote ‘Firestarter’ and it was like I went totally out on a limb to record him and we’d have never even thought of getting him in the studio so that was, that was a really good moment, you know.

Things like, yeah finding, seeing, you know, when this record suddenly having three tracks ‘Take Me To The Hospital’, ‘Warrior’s Dance’ and maybe ‘Thunder’ that suddenly felt like the album had finally got started after six months or you know those three tracks come together after about , I think maybe, sort of, month seven or something, so suddenly then going “Wow yeah, this feels like it’s really solid already” so we built on that. That’s my latest highlight.

Interviews by Andrea Schnepf aka neko.

Special thanks to ‘ant4000b’ and ‘James Jupiter’ for help with the transcribing.

Prodigy have updated their myspace presence and looks like Liam had a go at starting his own blog as well (if you can call it that after one post). Supposedly the album is in the “mid to last stages of recording”. Heard all that before? Hmmmmmmmm. (I can’t wait though!)
It’s on www.myspace.com/theprodigy (come on, make them your ‘friend’)

Noel Gallagher has played a previously unreleased demo of the track that had been trigger and later became Shoot Down on AONO, with rather raw vocals by Liam Gallagher. And we like it very much! Taken from Radio 1 [Listen] [discuss]

There’s no more tour dates currently for The Prodigy this year, but I’ll keep you posted as this changes.

Liam: Hahaha, is that the last time I’ve put something on there? Fucking hell that is like 6 months ago!

8!

8 months ago. Shit. Yeah, good, I forgot we had a website. I don’t know, just haven’t done anything. I’ve been writing music, that is the most important thing, you know?

So is there any new material?

There is loads of new material.

I’ve done like, maybe, for this record I am going to record 30 tracks. I’ve done like 18 so far. Then we’re going to pick the best ones. We haven’t done many vocals yet, ive just done a lot of music.

I am going to do 30 tracks and then we’re going to hone it down and choose like the 10 or 11 best ones and some of the other ones might be b-sides or whatever, you know.

“None of the tracks you’ve heard so far are going to be on the album!”

So what does the new stuff sound like?

Fast, scary and raving!

Are you still going down the more melodic route that you were talking about earlier?

Hmm, [thinks] Maybe.

I mean, it’s quite different. Some of it sounds quite 60s inspired, garagey you know. It’s cool, really cool. But in other tracks, I’ve done like a Ska track that is really fucking great.

It’s quite varied so far, but it’s hard to get an overall picture of what it is going to be like at the moment, because I am kind of still writing and still enjoying writing. And it will all change again when the vocals get on it.

On the last record [Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned] you wrote mostly on your own and you didn’t play live at the time, whereas now you’re obviously on tour and you’re together with the other guys most of the time. How does that influence your writing?

It’s wicked, it’s back on the road, getting inspirations from the gigs, you see clearly what has to be done when you play live. It kind of reminds you of what you’re about. But we haven’t been playing any new stuff just because of the Internet thing.

And the other thing is we usually play in sound checks, but we haven’t been at any sound checks because they are festivals, so we haven’t had the chance to play any of the new tracks, which is a shame. It is going really well, it is going much better, much quicker than the last record. And we’re really enjoying it, it’s not difficult so far, it has been really fun.

You said because of the Internet thing you’re not playing live….

None of the tracks you’ve heard so far are going to be on the album!

Does that include the Hurricane Heatwave?

Yes, everything! Dead Ken beat maybe, don’t know… Maybe .

How come ‘Dead Ken Beats’, for example, can’t make it on the album, is it just not working in the studio?

No, I wouldn’t say that. Maybe that is one of the few tracks that we’re all…. It might elevate into something else but so far we haven’t been able to put any vocals on that that made it the good track that it deserves. So I haven’t decided what I am going to do with that track yet.

I love it!

Yeah I know, I love it, it’s brilliant!

How about ‘Warning’, you’ve been playing that live for almost 2 years now?

‘Warning’ is a good live track, Warning instrumental is going on a film which I can’t talk about yet. It is an “in-between albums” track. I’ve put it on a film, really cool. It is actually a British film with American actors in. It’s about all these hitmen that are trying to attack this place at one time. But it is still under wraps so I can’t tell you much about it really.

And that Heatwave track that you played at Brixton once [December 2005] and another time at Download Festival [June 2006], how come you decided not to include that?

It sounds dated! That track sounds dated now, so that won’t be going on. May tear it apart and use the best bits on something else.

You mentioned you’re quite concerned about website downloads and all that. In the last interview we did [October 2005] you mentioned that you were going to upload quite a lot of old demos, like trigger instrumental and even much older demos…

I am definitely going to do that. Hahaha! People don’t believe me anymore do they? But I am going to do it for sure. I am going to put all the old demos up. Yeah, why not put it all up?

You’re probably aware that there was an old tape around?

I don’t know nothing about that. Hahaha….

It was real, it is basically like, it wasn’t the original demo tape. It was some unreleased stuff that I wrote maybe during 1991. That guy basically used to live with Keith and he fancied himself as a bit of a fucking bongo player. And him and another guy played at a rave, I think it was in August or September in Cambridge with us. Somehow, and I don’t know how cause I didn’t say he could go on there, but somehow he ended up on stage with us and Leeroy gave him that tape with some unreleased tracks, maybe 4 tracks or something and the rest of the Charly EP. That was basically like his rehearsal tape with Leeroy’s handwriting on.

I am not angry with him selling it. It’s up to him… I can’t do anything about him selling it, it’s his tape, it’s unfortunate. But I wish that I’d been quicker in releasing all the demos before he had a chance to make money out of us.

So does that mean you’re planning also to get some more old stuff on your website?

Yeah, I am going put all the old demos up! Yeah, all of them! There are some really old ones that people haven’t heard yet. They are fucking shit, but if people want to hear them, they can hear them. Obviously they are not released because they are shit, that is the reason they didn’t come out, you know. But if people are interested in them they can hear them!

Within a month all the old demos are going to be up there.

I am not going to write that!

Mark my words, mark my words. It is true, honestly!

What were some of the names on that tape? ‘Dr. Zupan’ was that on it?

One was ‘Manic’, I think…

No, I don’t remember that. I’d been interested to know what that is…it might have been ‘Maniac’, but not ‘Manic’.

[Note: the actual tape does list ‘Manic’ as a track]

They are all old; they are all tracks I did after the first EP, sort of like ‘Pandemonium’ time.

The new album in the making, have you got like a timeline when it is should be ready, or when you think it may be released?

I want to release it for summer next year [2007]; that is my plan. It’s feasible at the moment, anything that fucks up with that is like… If it was the matter to deliver it to the record company and it could be out in a month then that would be fine but they want 3 months notice, they want 3 months lead time to promote it, so that’s the thing that could delay it if it went over.

It seems to be written quite quickly at the moment. When I write an album it has to feel like it’s got like some kind of connection between tracks, that it has got an angle, it’s got a sound. But lots of tracks I’ve written so far are kind of like one is pulling in one direction, one is pulling in another. I don’t think I’ve written an integral track that is shaping the whole album yet, that is why I am carrying on writing. I’ve written some good tunes but I am still fighting for the track that is going to be the leader, you know what I mean? Or the shaping tune, the tune that shapes the album.

When I wrote ‘Spitfire’ on the last record I thought, yeah that gives the album [Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned] the kind of element, the edge and aggression that I wanted. ‘Firestarter’ was obviously the one before [The Fat of The Land] and ‘Poison’ was maybe the one on the other one [Music for the Jilted Generation]. Because we haven’t finished tracks with vocals yet, I don’t think we’ve come across that track for this record yet.

So you haven’t done any vocals yet or you haven’t finished any?

We’ve done a few vocals, we’re still doing it, we’re still writing. It is a long process, it is not quick. It is also hard to get everyone in the studio at the same time.

Are you planning on doing collaborations again on this album?

No, I don’t think so. Maybe, maybe, but I’ve got no one in mind at the moment. Definitely not doing any rap collaborations, no Kool Keith on this record! Maybe there might be collaborations in smaller ways, some musicians and stuff like that. I don’t really want any major collaborations.

Are there any specific influences for this record, you mentioned it was more garagey, 60s…

Some of it is quite psychedelic in a way, not in a Chemical Brothers way, but more in a 60’s kind of way. I can’t really explain, it is fast, really fast! It sounds like a band. It is definitely not breakbeat or drum’n’bass or any kind of thing. It just sounds like Prodigy.

Are there any specific bands that influence you?

No, not really. There are bands out there that I really like but I’ve been listening to old stuff you know.

You’ve been playing a quite similar setlist for a while…

I apologize about that! Haha!

“We are really dying to play the new shit”

Would it maybe help you write new material if you started playing more new stuff or varying the setlist?

We are really dying to play the new shit, I’ve got to tell you we are! It is such a pain in the ass.

So you won’t play them until the new album is out?

No, no, no of course not. We’re doing Creamfields as you know. I think I did an interview when I was pissed.

Yeh, I was going to ask about that one…

Yeah, forget about that, I lied because I was drunk, I got excited! So basically we are not playing any new tracks there. That is the last gig we’re playing in England so the next gig we do in England we’ll be playing new stuff. That’s the last time of people seeing us like this. Maybe we’ll put some other tunes we haven’t played in a while in. Might put ‘Rhythm of Life’ in or shit like that, I don’t know yet.

We’re definitely not playing any new material. No way. I just get really disheartened when people like… if we haven’t finished a track yet and we’re just trying these ideas out and we used to be able to do that and it used to be no backlash, but now things are torn apart and I fucking hate that. It is not good for a band.

Once we are 95% finished and we are really sure of it in our heads and we know it is going to be out within the next few months then that is the time to drop it and we’re going “here we are, that is it!”. If like tiny things have to get changed like arrangements or shit like that, you know that is fine. But like not when we are just trying things out. Maybe there might be few little beats and shit flying around but nothing major. Not yet, it is too early, no point in playing a year ahead of when the album is coming out you know with new tracks, that is silly.

Do you think the new material that you’ve been writing is as compatible with your live show?

It is always designed for live, maximum impact is live. The album is fucking going to be exciting. I am really excited about it, do you know what I mean? It is going to easily piss on the last album!

Basically this is to inform people we’re still fucking alive and we still give a shit, you know? We’ve been working our asses off and when you’re writing a record it is like we’re totally in that mode… You kind of go into selfish mode and not thinking about anyone else. It is like we should actually have someone run our website who keeps people updated and gets quotes of us up every month of what is going on and that type of shit. So that is what we intend to do.

We are probably going to take the website down in about 3 or 4 months and then have a new one so it builds up to the new album.

It’s hard talking about a record when it’s so far in advance. We are in the studio, we’re hearing it all the time, it’s shaping itself as the months go by. Last month I’ve been in there quite a bit, the month before I was on holiday, now we are on the road and other shit going on. It’s like some months it slows down. A Prodigy album takes a fucking long time to get written, it does. It is not like a band goes and writes and records. Since it’s mostly me doing it, if I don’t go in there, it doesn’t get written, that is that!

Are you going to keep playing live until the album is out?

No. By November people won’t see us for a while. There is no point in playing until we have the new shit prepared and then we get back out again. Because otherwise we’ll just be doing shit gigs, no point, do you know what I mean?

How have you been enjoying recent festivals or are you missing the small shows?

I like doing the small shows because you can get to try things out in the sound check. You can hear straight away whether you think if it’s going to be rocking or not, make some adjustments. It is different than in a studio, you start getting the perspective of it.

Festivals have been cool. I think as a band we feel really tight. This last couple of years it feels really tight. I checked some of the shows, some of this recorded stuff from years ago. We are much better now than we used to be. That is what I think.

Any recent shows that stood out for you?

Download was pretty mad. Isle of Wight and Download were two completely different gigs. Isle of Wight was really middle of the road. I was like fucking hell! There is one stage with 50.000 people in front of it. That was pretty like, I thought this is going to be hard to make this happen.

It was a great show. It felt like middle of the road, when I was walking through checking people out and you know it wasn’t like Download where it was fucking hardcore or Glastonbury, it felt like a lot of normal people were there, you know what I mean? Download was completely insane. I really love that, the chaos of it all.

We don’t want people to get fed up with it. Because we’ve been lucky to be able to come back after we’d done this record [Their Law The Singles]. I didn’t want to do it.

Did you in the end enjoy it at all?

Yeah….I kind of fell out with the record company about it, because I didn’t want to do it, but they kind of made us do it and then we got into it and said ‘let’s do it’. But we were honest about it; we told everyone we didn’t want to do it and then just made the best of it.

But at the end of the day, you know, the tracks we’re proud of, and if we wouldn’t have done that, personally the relationships between the band members wouldn’t have been as tight as it is now. We wouldn’t have been able to go back into the studio have such a buzz with lots of ideas with such momentum and drive. So that’s good.

Did revisiting your history inspire you to come up with new material?

Not really, no. Doing the gigs is the biggest inspiration really. It’s really easy to see what has to be done. Playing the tracks really shows what works and what’s good about the tracks and you get reminded of dynamics in songs and all that and then when you’re in the studio it’s important to remember all that.

So what’s a typical day in the studio for Mr Howlett?

Erm, …usually get there about 12 and leave at about 9, sometimes working late. People ring me up all day so usually only at about 5pm the phone stops ringing, and I stop getting e-mails, shit like that. And then when I’m on a real roll I work late but usually leave about 9 o’clock. And just, write really loud music all day long!

How do you start a track?

All different ways. Sometimes I’ve got a guitarist in the studio and we lay shit down, sometimes we have no beats at all and done sessions where it’s just guitars and vocals and writing songs in a more traditional way. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn’t work. It’s really easy to change things, so if we just try and figure out what a vocal is doing if it’s with guitars and we may want to throw the guitar away again later and change it for something else. I’ve done that on a few things and it’s been really good.

Other times, I’ve been in studios in Ladbroke Grove and I’ve been walking around going to loads of record shops down there. So I’m in there probably a couple of times a week, buying tunes. But old shit, old weird 60s records and 70s type shit and whatever. I was in there and I heard this record, it was like this Mexican kind of track and I made it into a ska tune.

So, different ways for different tunes!

When do the vocals get written?

Yeah, we’re starting to think about that now. There are certain tunes I write for Keith, certain tunes I write for Maxim and certain tunes I don’t write for either. Because the sample side of things is still important, you know, we still have respect for the roots and DJ culture. We won’t do a full vocal album, some tracks won’t have any vocals on, some will have samples, some will have both or one or two of them.

Is Reason still a part of the writing process?

[Liam quoted this software as major help for AONO album in first nekosite interview]

I’m not fucking promoting them anymore!

They haven’t done anything wrong, I’m just fed up with…you know, I still use it, but I also use Logic, Protools, I use Ableton, I use whatever is there really. Reason is good for getting shit happening quickly, but it doesn’t sound like Logic or Protools, they sound better.

So either way, it ends up on Protools anyway.

Is Champagne still a major inspiration as well?

Yeah, I’ve moved on from Moet now, moved on to Veuve. I love Veuve, I don’t drink anything else! In the studio actually, we’ve got a bit of a collection. I have to put a picture on the web site so people can see, it’s actually quite funny.

We’re hoping to get the album out next year, it won’t be early summer. Lot’s of things affect when an album comes out. All that is totally out of my control. When it is delivered, then I have done my bit, it’s up to the record company to do their bit after that.

[Interview is finished, but Liam doesn’t believe I have no more questions]

Okay then, favorite Big Brother housemate?

Hmm… Shabbaz! hahaha! No, I don’t watch it, I watched it when it started. I can’t be bothered with it. Does my brain in. I am more into Love Island hahahaha!

Interview by Andrea Schnepf aka neko – www.nekozine.co.uk 17th August 2006, Backstage at Gampel Festival (Switzerland). Thanks for help with transcribing to ‘ant4000b’

(19th October 2005 – Copenhagen)

Neko: So you released the Their Law – The Singles album … I’d quite to talk to you through the selection on disc 2. For example Voodoo Beats, which has been quite a favourite with the fans. What made you bring it back? Have you had it sit around already or was there some reason it got selected?

Liam Howlett: To be honest, not all the choices of what records were on that 2nd CD were down to the fans, but that particular one was. I kind of thought, you know, people still like that track, but it’s not really anything that could have developed into anything else, it’s a kind of a live show thing, you know what I mean. So I thought this was a good place to put it, on that second CD, it’s a good bonus track.

I think a lot of people were asking about the samples – I changed the samples in it. It used to have a sample in it ‘my style is unorthodox, but of course it rocks’, do you remember that? Now it’s the Kool Keith thing, because we couldn’t clear that sample, so we’re using Kool Keith now.

Neko: Is that Kool Keith sample from the ‘wake up call’ full vocals version? Are you ever going to release that?

LH: Yeah, that will become available, even if it’s on our new web site. We’re putting a lot of effort into that, we’re definitely making sure it’s going to be the best one we’ve had, it’s going to be a platform to let people hear [thinks] kind of shit that’s not ever gonna be released, but people should hear, you know. We’re going to put tracks on there every month or something, just so people can hear stuff. So maybe that track “Wake Up” might appear on there at some point, or maybe not. I don’t know yet.

Neko: The track ‘Back to School’ is also on the album. When I asked you about that last year in the interview, when it was still the ‘Leeds intro’, you said it never worked out in the studio.

LH: Yeah, basically it was never destined to be an actual track. It was written for the Leeds thing, you know, as an intro. The actual track was written quite long before that, it was written in 1998. It’s quite old skool sounding. It was just written and put on a DAT tape in a cupboard! And then when we did the Leeds thing, I pulled it out of there. Do you remember what year that was?

Neko: 2002

LH: Yeah, so it was already a couple of years old. So it just, kind of developed from there really. It’s a track we like doing live, it works live; you know what I mean.

It’s a track I really like it, it captures a kind of 1996 spirit, it’s really old school for us, it works for us. We play it live because it’s different, it still evolves. Did you notice today? We just fuck around really. It’s a hard track to record and put on a record, I didn’t want to turn it into a full vocal track, I kind of just wanted to capture the best kind of arrangement for that version.

Neko: Was it called Gun Release at some point?

LH: Nah… I don’t know. ‘Gun Release’ was something the fans made up. There’s no such thing, that’s a myth. It was never called ‘Gun Release’, but there is a track called ‘Gun Reprise’. That’s the track I played tonight after Climbatize.

Neko: The Osaka fill …

LH: Yeah, exactly, the Osaka fill – that’s ‘Gun Reprise’.

Neko: Audio Bullys did a remix for Out of Space.

LH: I love it. I know it’s not very popular. But I love it.

Neko: In the credits it says you did some additional production on it. Did you rework it a lot?

LH: Not really, I edited it and reprogrammed it a bit. To be honest, what happened was, they gave me a mix, and to me it was a bit too club based. So I kind of chopped it down, did some edit on some of the beats, did some minimal work on it, just edited it down and chopped the beats around.

Yeah, not many people like that, but I do really like it! I like it, because they’ve taken an old track and just stamped their authority on it, stamped what they’re about on the track.

You can’t beat the original, the original is a classic now. But I really like their track

Neko: Initially when you had these two remixes there was talk that you may release a series of 12” around the album release.

LH: Well, there’s lots of remixes around – but I don’t know whether they are gonna come out. We obviously had Voodoo People Pendulum, OOS, we had SMBU Subfocus, the drum n’bass thing. There was a no good mix and another VP mix, the wonder kind – did you hear the wonder kind mix?

All in all, there’s about seven remixes floating around, some of which we didn’t use. The thing with this record is, we didn’t kind of want to do the usual thing and release a token new track and put it out as a single, everyone does that. For me It was about the past, it wasn’t about selling it of the back of that.There won’t be anymore singles off that record. People must be happy we’re back in the studio recording brand new material – new shit.

Neko: You have Razor on the album – what made it stand out from the other Flint tracks on the album?

LH: I like the groove, it’s got a militant groove; I like that.I really like Keith’s vocals on it. And it seemed like a good place to put that track, you know what I mean, it was worthy to make it on the record.

Neko: Did you do this version earlier or specifically for the album?

LH: No ,not especially .i recorded it a year ago and we played it live a few times .I don’t know whether it necessarily works live or not. It’s kind of too linear. I just finished it and I liked it, enough to put it on the record. And we talked about it and it had a place on there.

Neko: How about “The way it is live remix” …

LH: That’s exactly what it says it is. I know people were a bit confused and thought it was a live recording of that track. It’s basically just the version, when we play it live off the laptop at the gigs. It’s a chopped up version of that. After going back to the studio and reworking some of the always outnumbered tracks – that was what that was.

Neko: You had Brixton 97 on there – why did you choose that set? Why not something newer or also older stuff, or from different eras, for example?

LH: that was a good recording of a pinicle moment. we’d recorded that show and it’s basically the audio to the visual on the DVD, did you know that?

Of course we have lots of different shows, but it was good to have some continuity, I like that show. I like Firestarter, I like how the album starts with Firestarter and ends with Firestarter. ‘Thats your fucking lot!’- ha! I luv that shit, it always makes me smile that bit.

So yeah, that just seemed to make sense for us. I’m always a bit sceptical with Prodigy live recorded tracks, but these work, and we’ve got Spitfire from Pinkpop.

Neko: Why are you sceptical with the Prodigy live recorded tracks?

LH: They never capture the energy. We always said from day one that if anyone wants to see us it has to be live.

I think the DVD, we’ve waited a long time to release something like this, but we finally went “ok, we’re doing this thing, lets try and make it something that’s cool”.

And I think the DVD, it incorporates a lot of shit, it’s not just a bunch of videos, we got the live thing, some making of some of the tracks and the real videos.

But people really need to come to the gigs, to know what it’s about.

Neko: Is that why you’re quite wary of live recordings on the internet?

LH: I don’t mind – it’s all cool, but stuff we put out is stuff we think is quality. We can’t control anyone else.

Neko: I interviewed you a year ago and there you hinted at that you were going to do this ‘best of’, you said you wanted it be a “cool special package for the people”…

LH: [laughs] bullshit, haha.

Neko: … with “new tracks, remixes and unheard demo”’. Was that because you knew you had to do this ‘best of’?

LH: Do you think I back tracked from that slightly? (grins)

The thing is with the record company, album number five was always going to be the ‘Greatest Hits ‘ – I don’t want to call it a fucking ‘Greatest Hits’ though.

It was in my contract from 1992, you know! In 1992 we were just like “haha, Greatest Hits, what a bunch of cunts, we’re never going to go that far”.

As soon as Always Outnumbered was done the record company we’re like “ok, so next year should be this package”.

I was like ‘”fucks sake, that’s shit, I just want to do another album!”

They were like “no no no, it’s a good time to do it, it’s a good summary of what you’ve done”.

So I gradually grew to the idea that it might be cool if we can be creative with it. Me being selfish aswell ,I wanted to hold a record in my hand that had all my best work on

It was up to us to pull together something we were happy with. But when it came to it,. there was no way I was gonna pull in some of the new tracks, some of the new ideas we’ve got that were developing, just to stick them on there.they r too good just for bonus shit.

It was always about the past, about what we’d done before.

Neko: So, the inevitable ‘No Souvenirs’ question – you did once say people were going to hear it in all versions and obviously you’ve changed your mind again.

LH: Where did I say that – Was I drunk?

The trouble with that track is – and I don’t know whether I’m a bit paranoid about it – it’s gone on so long, and it’s had so much build up. The only person outside the band who’s heard it is Martin James. At the time I played it to him he thought it was one of the best prodigy tunes he’s ever heard. But it wasn’t ready. I could go on and on talking about it. The lyrics were written at a time when they meant something to rob, but those lyrics are no longer relevant, you know what I mean. The chorus lyrics are relevant, but the actual verses aren’t.

I try to be as honest as I can – with that track, it’s got so much attention to it, it’s only going to lead to disappointment, which is not what I want to put myself in the position of it now. I know I’m not happy with it now, but it’s got something. I think people should just fucking forget about it!

It’s a very different thing, it’s like a song, it’s got a chorus and verses, its got a beginning, a middle and an end. It is a Prodigy track, but it’s more of a song. It was always 60 – 70% there, but when we finished it, it was just like, yeah, it’s really cool, but it’s not quite there. It’s the hardest thing I ever tried to finish.

Neko: You’ve done this video for Voodoo People Pendulum Remix, where you have people blindfolded run around in a forest. Who came out with this idea?

LH: The director.

Neko: Sure you must have had different treatments proposed to you, what made you choose this particular one?

LH: The reason why is the remix has constant movement. And to do a car chase is just dull, it’s really obvious, you know. The original track, Voodoo People, the video we had for that had constant movement, with the slightly naff James Bond rip off we did. We laugh at it now but it’s kind of cool. We had a good time doing it, you know. It was funny watching it.

The idea was to keep the movement there. The idea is actually from a Spanish movie, I can’t remember the name, but it’s from a Spanish film. And it’s pretty straightforward. We were not going to be in it. – but then we had a few stupid cameo roles, you know.

I felt – not uncomfortable – but I felt really kind of detached from that remix, cause it’s got nothing to do with me, know what I mean?

So it’s odd, it felt a bit bizarre being in that video, it’s weird doing a video for a remix of my band.

I wish I’d done the mix. But, I can’t remix my own songs; it’s the fucking hardest thing for me to do. Because the originals are what they are, I can’t do a better mix of it, you know. I can make it sound better – but I can’t make a completely different version of it, it’s the hardest thing, I always come back to what it was. It’s a weird thing for us to be in that video, it’s not something I’d do again.

Neko: And Sharkey makes an appearance as well …

LH: Yeah, I was surprised how many people actually noticed that. We were going to put a competition up, saying “did anyone notice anything about the video?” Because I didn’t realise people would actually recognise her! Sharkey works with John now, she’s great, she’s a really good friend of us still.

Neko: And no Motorola sponsorship …

LH: OK, that’s shite, I had to laugh when you said that!

I actually don’t know – I never looked at it that way. The guy just handed me this mobile phone and said “use this!”

Neko: He probably had a deal.

LH: I didn’t get a phone out of it! I’m pure Nokia. But no one can ask me that – that’s insulting, ha ha. No one will sponsor me.

I was insulted when someone said I was sponsored by Korg. But as I told you earlier, I’ve upset them now. Because in an interview I just speak my mind. You know they always give me free stuff – or they used to. So I was doing an interview for a key board magazine and someone asked me “Do you get given lots of free shit?” I was like “yeah, Korg give me lots of free stuff, but its stacking up in my attic!” Ha ha ha. I was really just taking the piss, I was having a laugh.

So apparently some head dude from Japan was on the phone to the UK one day “we had never one of our artists say anything like this, what’s going on?”. They are very fucking angry with me!

Neko: Last question about the video. What’s in the bag?

LH: [laughs then silence] It’s a 12 inch dildo – that’s why Sharkey looks very happy!

Neko: You also had a DVD coming out…

LH: It’s in the fucking shops, I can’t believe it, I saw a copy today!

It is in every shop I’ve been in, it was in HMV in Stansted airport yesterday morning.

That was a fuck up really – it was no ones fault. I tell you what happened. It’s obviously built to be the ‘Best Of The Prodigy’, but the first thing you see – it’s really stupid – when you put your DVD in when the interface comes up, the first thing you see is “The Prodigy live at Brixton”. So what they say is; what is it? Is it a live video or is it a compilation of videos? So basically they made us change it.

Neko: Is that what it is? Everyone thought it was about Smack My Bitch Up …

LH: No no no, nothing to do with that. It’s to do with the fact that what comes up when you put it in, so what they’re saying is, it can be confusing to a buyer. Is it a compilation or is it a live video. But it’s going to make the versions that are out there now worth some money, because all those have gone out now and they are wrong. It’s always with things like that, in 5 years time when all the correct version is out people will want to have the original version.

Neko: On the DVD, you also have a hidden extra the “Always Outnumbered Never Outgunned demo mix” with sections of Trigger / Shootdown / Gun Reprise.

LH: No Souvenirs was on there but I took it out, the chorus was on there. I took it out because it involves Rob and I didn’t ask Rob whether I could do that and I didn’t want to get into that cause you never know what’s going to happen in the future with that track.

Neko: What else is on that demo mix?

LH: Just bits and pieces from the very early stages of recording the album. All these visuals, they were done at that point as well. We had this guy Jimmy, who also did the BGAT artwork, he had all these really cool visuals, but his end result for the cover didn’t cut it for me, it wasn’t quite right.

He had all those windmill ideas, and then to my fucking horror the Gorillaz had that windmill thing. Because I thought that was a really cool thing, we had this dude, that had a windmill on his head, a mad character. We might bring that back, cause he was really cool. So if people wonder what those windmills are, they’re from that period.

The tracks on there, they’re all like demos, bits and pieces that fans may be interested in.

Neko: The Gun Reprise track, you once told me it was a part of Shoot Down at some point …

LH: Basically, that was an orchestral version with strings of bits of shoot down, it was originally going to be on the album, but in the end I just didn’t bother.

Neko: Are going to do anything with it, you played it live tonight…

LH: It’s got good musical value. it’s got a slight Massive Attack kind of feel. So I don’t know,it’s kind of tied to the other album. As I said before, the new album will be more melodic, so there might be the odd track with that kind of flavour.

Neko: You’ve just released a DVD. Are you planning to release other DVDs in future, like a dedicated live DVD for example?

LH: Yeah, we’re going to record the tour we’ve got coming up. We were just discussing tonight which dates we are going to record when we do our tour in November / December. We will hopefully get one wicked thing out of it, but I don’t know if that’s something people want to get, you know?

I think just a live DVD, I don’t know, I’d like to give people a bit more, so we might do something clever with it in the future. Maybe when we do our new material, we could tie it in, maybe when we do our new album, it could be a double album and the other disc could be the DVD. Just putting the live thing out, to me, wouldn’t really be good value for money.

Neko: You’re confirmed to release a “Back to mine” compilation in January, have you got any special tracks planned for that?

LH: Yes, I can confirm, the “Wake the fuck up” that will be the first track on that album. Basically, this album, don’t expect it to be like Dirtchamber, cause it’s not mixed. At some point there will be another mix album from me, but that will be after the new record, because that’s what I’m concentrating on at the moment. Back to Mine is basically the shit I play when I’m at my house having a party. It’s a selection of tracks that mean something to me over the years, there’s lots of different shit. Some of it is obvious, but they are tracks I really like. There’s no Sex Pistols on there.

Public Enemy, Specials, The Stranglers, Vatican DC, QOTSA, Method Man mix Prodigy, Dolly Parton ‘Jolene’!

Yeah, Dolly Parton – I freak my friends out when we’re at my house having a party. I stick that on and watch their faces. It’s got no bass on it, no bass whatsoever, and her voice is just wicked. It had to go on there.

And I put “The Jam – in the city” on there for Keith.

Neko: And the “Wake the fuck up Jam” are you only going to put it on the back to mine, or on a new Prodigy album as well?

LH: Nah, not on a new Prodigy album, no. It’s exclusive to this record and that’s that. Cause it is a chop up, it’s a remix obviously of a few different tracks – it’s got bits of Wake up in it, it’s got bits of Spitfire in it, it’s not a track that has got any more development, do you know what I mean, it is what it is. It’s a track I love though, I love doing it live!

And that’s the thing, when we do the tour, we probably won’t do Warning on that tour, because it’s not relevant at all to the Singles album, and that shit. So we want to put in some old stuff, but Wake the fuck up is not one I want to drop, because I fuckin love it. The thing with the tour though is that I don’t want it to be a nostalgic trip, you know, I still want it to have an edge.

I’m not saying I’m just playing loads of new stuff, but the old stuff needs to have a bit of a twist, it can’t be straight

Neko: You’ve already spoken about new material and that it will be ‘more melodic’. How does that fit into the Prodigy sound?

LH: People must understand that when I say that – it will still be equally as tough and it won’t loose anything of what we’re about. It will be more the melodic value the first and second album had, but maybe the third didn’t have that much. Cause I think the first album had quite a lot of musical value, do you know what I mean, but I think as time has gone on that has taken a bit of a back seat, but I think the new stuff definitely has more musical value.

Neko: How are ‘Warning’ and ‘Dead ken beats’ going to fall into that category?

LH: Dead ken beats will definitely be on that record, we were talking about it tonight. Dead ken is a track we really like, we like the groove and the beat and it’s really fucking tough.its stil developing. It’s a different groove; it’s really kind of fresh sounding. It’s a track im really going to have to go and find the right vocal for, which is one of the things I am doing right now.

We decided tonight 5 minutes before the show – let’s not do Wake up, lets do Dead Ken, let’s just do a jam. And I don’t know whether you noticed tonight at the show it was a mish mash. These little shows are cool, be cause they really give us the opportunity to fuck around, you know. The big shows when you got lots of people there you really got to plan it out more and figure out the set. Tonight was more making up as we go along. No arrangements in Dead Ken at all, lets just fucking jam!

Neko: As it’s the Their Law The Singles tour, have you got any more old stuff you’re bringing back?

LH: I see you’ve got Jericho written down there, that’s definitely coming back.

Neko: When I asked you last year, you told me off about asking you about bringing back the old tracks….

LH: Well, Out of Space has obviously been in the set since Dublin, I know you were there, and that was a great fucking moment, but now it’s like the position it is in the set is really good, it is a great way to finish the set.

But with the other tracks, the thing is we’ve got Charly and EITP. I think we’ve got to try and somehow incorporate at least one of these tracks into the set, I don’t know how yet (pauses) I really don’t know. (pauses) I really fucking don’t know!

Neko: With Death of the Prodigy Dancer, you had told me a while ago that you had lost the studio version … [it is on the new Prodigy web site now]

LH: Haha, yeah, I found it!

I found it in the DATs in the studio. I was flicking through the drawer, and I pulled it out – fucking hell, that’s the only copy I’ve got of it right there. And at the end of it, because I didn’t press stop on the DAT quick enough on the DAT a bit of the next track comes in, ha ha.

But like I said, you know, and we will be more on it this time with the web site, hopefully each month we will be giving out old unreleased shit. Trigger instrumental might be the next one, maybe.

Neko: When you are playing the next shows now, is it going to be a set building up or more just tracks dropping in and out again?

LH: Yeah, it’s always building it up. Like now, I know I’ve got like four tracks in my head, that I’m working towards when we’re on that tour. John [the band’s tour manager] is disgusted with me that they’re not in there now, but I’m like chill out man, by the time we get to England they will be fresh for everyone. I want it to be fucking fresh, do you know what I mean, I don’t want to do it now, I want it to be fucking fresh, for us as well. So the fact is like, I’ve got quite a lot of work to do. So maybe the next few gigs, people will gradually hear one of the tracks creep in. I played Jericho at the sound check the other day, and Keith was like “What’s that tune man?” – I was like “it’s fucking Jericho man!”

Neko: Do you feel that going away from festivals gives you more space to experiment?

LH: Yeah, absolutely. It’s so much more room to be much more experimental at these gigs. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing for the fans, I don’t know. It’s good for us. I personally think that if people come to a show and see a live jam of Dead Ken made up on the spot, then that ain’t gonna happen a lot, that is never gonna happen on the tour. By the time we’re on that tour it will be a proper arrangement, you know. And people should value that they can say ‘I was there’.

Neko: What do you like about touring?

LH: I love the fatigue of touring, you know when you’re completely fucked and you just go on and on and on and on…. I love that.

I hate travelling, I hate sitting on an airplane, I hate getting up early in the morning, I hate everything about it apart from walking on stage and going ‘yeah – this is what we do’.

I hate tour buses… we did tour buses a couple of months ago – you didn’t come to those eastern European gigs, did you? We did tour buses there and it was fucking miserable. They’re just like coffins, these bunks, and I was just awake all night thinking the bus is going to crash, you know!

Neko: You got a new web site and said you were going to upload some stuff now …

LH: People should be happy with that, it took a lot of work!

Actually, people hacked into the site the night before it was finished. And I was like to the guy from Rockstar who did it, “come on, make it a bit more secure, for fucks sake”. It was only still work in progress and people were already posting and moaning “oh it’s not this, it’s not that”. It’s just one fucking lunatic who has hacked into it not everyone was doing it, it was one person.

Two weeks ago it still wasn’t together, but we were talking about it one month ago we said we wanted a past, present and future. It’s all set up now, any archive stuff we’ve got goes in there, any news stuff we’ve got goes in there and any future stuff goes in there. I may well upload 10 or 20 seconds of new tracks on there, so people can vibe off that.it’s a good platform to do that. I don’t think we had that on any web site we had before. It’s all there now, all the holes are there to be filled.

Neko: How about your own ‘personal messages’ on there, do you enjoy that?

LH: Oh yeah, I always do that when I’m pissed. Always! I love them, I always do them late at night, at 12 I’m sitting there going … [pretends to type] … I get very involved you know, I get very passionate.

Neko: So we were talking about that you are going to upload some rare tracks on the web site… how about the recording of Diesel Power live with Kool Keith, can we reveal you have this recorded?

LH: I have got a recording – but I wouldn’t say its good enough. In Australia…. Ha ha ha. Let’s just live the moment, for people who were there, that’s all I can say. That won’t be on.

With the new web site, I am really keen on putting some stuff on that people are really interested in, for example I may put on these two mixes when I did this competition when I was still DJing. And I think that may be funny for people to hear. It’s definitely going on at some point; it’s kind of got historic values!

Neko: Talking about historic values, and thinking back your career and also the last few years, anything you would have done differently now?

LH: Nothing. Not one thing. Well maybe the green and white costumes at the beginning …. [quiet] what the fuck was I thinking.

Neko: I saw you on some MTV show the other day commenting on the wind it up video…

LH: Yeah… that period, I didn’t want to release Wind it Up, I felt like Michael Jackson, who just caned his album and released every fucking single off that, I didn’t really want to release any more singles, I didn’t want to release Wind it up, but the record company was like ‘yeah, we should do it’. So that was it for me, wind it up period – I hated the video… I liked the track, but I hated the idea of releasing it as a single, you know what I mean, I was over that, I was over the rave period.

Wind it up was recorded probably a year before it came out, so for me it was like releasing an old track. Actually when the video was shot in LA, that was when I first heard Rage Against the Machine’s first album and as soon as I heard that it blew my mind. And I went back to London to the studio, with that in my head, fresh, and recorded Their Law and Poison. They were the first tracks that kind of inspired that anger and that new sound that came out.

Neko: Is there a new angle you have now with the new material. With the last album you had a new program you used Reason that influenced you, is there a specific new influence now?

LH: You know the Reason thing was just a way forward for me to write music. Reason is a good platform to get ideas going, but it is not necessarily the platform to finish tracks on, for me. It is good for me to go into a hotel room and quickly get an idea down, that’s what its good for.

There is no angle, just angry beats and noise. Keith and Maxim are going to be on this record.

They wont be on every track, but they will be on a few.

We’ve been through some tough times like any band, the Babys Got a Temper period was fucking dangerous for this band, it was nearly the end for me. None of us were speaking to each other, it was just bad communication.

Neko: How did you resolve that?

LH: The music resolved it, because that’s the common denominator between us guys. We don’t necessarily hang out, we don’t have the same group of friends, but the music brought us back together. Once the album was done we knew …

I always knew we would play it live, but I didn’t know how we’d do it, I’d had it pictured in my head, obviously weren’t going to play the whole album. But that worked well, we all went back together in the studio, we all talked to each other again about the show. When we first stepped on stage in Greece – even though it wasn’t really the best gig we ever did, we’d kind of come off, knowing it was all cool, and that we had a future, knowing we had the fire still. And now its like, it’s all about, writing new tracks, if its not firing ,its not coming out.

Neko: When you did the last album you didn’t do any live shows, but now you’re back on the road while writing, do you think that’s a positive thing?

LH: Absolutely. I’ve said before, this band cannot survive without doing gigs, you know what I mean. That’s the end of it. We have to play gigs. We now start booking gigs for next year, and that’s a good thing. We may try out things during the sound check, we may drop something new in the set, you know. We won’t be doing a lot of UK gigs next year. One or two at the most.

Because when we come back we will be on fire with loads of fresh music. There’s no point being in people’s faces all the time. It’s better to come back with like six brand new tunes, killer tunes, you know, and bust them out straight there, rather than do a few UK gigs with no point.

Neko: I’ve got a fan question from James Jupiter for you …. Why the name change from The Prodigy, to Prodigy and then back to The Prodigy?

LH: (laughs)

Do you know what? I have no actual explanation for that!

I really have no explanation…. All I can say is, right, it’s to do with the logo, ha ha, it wouldn’t have fit in properly. Honestly, that’s the truth.

Because when we had like ‘Prodigy’ when we were in the BGAT period it was like a square, so there was no space for the ‘the’, it was something as fucking stupid as that. But it always has been ‘The Prodigy’ in my head.

Neko: Another one by JJ…apart from the Earthbound releases, did you ever release any others as white labels?

LH: That is for me to know. The answer is yes, but I’m not going to tell no one about that. They are not big tracks, but there is one other white label out there that people will know, but won’t know it’s me.

Neko: Next year… what is it going to be about for you, is it going to be about touring, recording the new album?

LH: It’s going to be about recording, writing and recording the new record. We started fucking around now, but because we have been so busy on tour we haven’t really gone hard into it. It’s really about putting the time in; you really have to give yourself that time. So next year, we’re not doing any gigs in January, so we’re going to be recording in January. February we’re going to be in Japan, big tour, we might do like 6 or 7, 8 gigs. March we’re going back to America, we’re doing the Miami Music conference, which really is like a dance event. Basically, our tour will evolve around that. We’ll probably do Washington, New York… we probably won’t go West, we will stay on the East coast.

The rest of the year will be sporadic gigs, you know like we did a couple of months ago when we were just here and there.

(20th October 2005 – Gothenburg)

Neko: When you started touring again a year ago it was probably a bit different than usual, because Liam wrote Always Outnumbered pretty much on his own…

Keith: Correct. But I’ve been there throughout his process, well not entirely but sort of I got the tunes when they were ideas and then maybe when they were at the next stage with the vocal on or as a more complete piece of music. So I sort of felt like I’d known some of the pieces for some time anyway, so it wasn’t like suddenly there was an album and I had to get with it. It didn’t feel alien, it still felt like a Prodigy process, it was just that I wasn’t going to be on the album as far as like doing vocals etc. So it wasn’t like I’ve been there when the Experience was being written, so it was no different to that, in some respects.

Neko: So how was it for you to adapt to this material?

Keith: To be honest it was an exciting process to… you know because it was different, we knew we were going out on tour and that these were the tracks that were taking us there. So to start again, to work on them tracks and just the whole momentum starting… what it takes… suddenly you’re talking to Fairsie [band tour manager] everyday and Mike Champion [band manager], Liam is ringin’ about this and saying “oh I just had a thought about that” and I am saying “should I do this or should I do that?”. You feel the energy and the momentum of the band starting again.

So it is actually quite exciting. But even if I didn’t like any of the tracks on the album or I didn’t like the tracks that I was going to get behind like Hotride etc… We went in and did Warning. That for me was exciting because it started the process. I love doing Hotride more than any other track at the moment. I love doing it like nothing else, so it doesn’t matter to me that I didn’t do the original vocal on there, not in the slightest. At the end of the day it is not an ego thing being in the Prodigy. We are sort of really powerful sort of driven people grown very stubborn and very think what we want to think and do what we want to do but there is no time for ego. You just got to get up there and join the forces and become fighters.

Neko: Do you think the whole process is easier now that you’ve been touring again for a year and spent more time together?

Keith: I think it is much easier to write, because everything seems to be written ultimately to go on stage, so sort to be fresh off the stage with that hunger to be back on it, it is so much easier than to be reflecting what it was like to be on the stage. Certainly when we were writing the last album there was a bigger period that we ever had off. To be away is hard work when it is what you do and it is your life. There is never a non-Prodigy day; I am always in the Prodigy. It is always a Prodigy day and then other bits happen. Every day, every minute is dedicated to it. It is like you’re on call out all the time. Whatever happens … I might not even be at my own funeral if a gig gets booked up, it is in my will that I get taken in the coffin to the gig and I have to get propped up in the corner and then I can be buried. That is what people don’t realize, everything you do, every minute when you’re partying till midday the next day you’re making sure you still have some energy left for the next show. Every time you think of a word or a phrase you write it down in case it becomes lyrics or something.

Neko: When you had the long break, did you miss all that?

Keith: Oh yeah, like nothing else. After 8 years of touring we were kind of needing it, because we were fuckin’ battered. You’d have to have done it to understand it, cause the preconception what being in the band is all about, you know shaggin’ birds, doing drugs and whatever. And that there is a teleporter that gets you around the world, you don’t have to get on the flight, you don’t have to spend 2 hours at one airport, 3 hours in a car. As if everything magically happens around you at the highest level. They don’t see the shit hotels that you’re staying in with cockroaches and then they bring you up some mouldy old shit to eat. People think it is this massive glamour; the glamour is the tightness of the band and the fun of making every situation work for us. Yeah it is mega things that you do. We always make the best of it. We do have fun and we do party and we do rock on.

So we needed that time off first, and then suddenly it wasn’t just time off. It was time to start that momentum going, but because it was such a tidal wave, it was like stopping a tsunami and then having to somehow shake the earth again to get it going. It is fucking hard work. For me I am pretty useless to myself, I need to be driven by something. This is my life this is my therapy, without this I am just self destructive and just fucking mental. I am useless to myself for myself. This is what drives me. And I can’t do things that I am told to do. It is very rare for me to have this sort of dedication, or this love for something, this very one thing. That is not what I do.

[The door opens and Liam steps in with a glass of champagne – takes a sip and goes “aaaaaah” - and leaves again]

That is not part of my make up. It is probably the only thing I have ever cherished so I am not going to fuck this up.

Neko: You also had a band called Flint, and Razor got used on the Singles album

Keith: That’s right

Neko: how did it evolve into the Prodigy track?

Keith: Obviously Liam knows the album, he listened to it, we’d discussed it and he just really loved it, loved the song, loved what it was about. He was really into it, he wanted to use it, he wanted to turn it into a Prodigy track. I was like “yeah man lets do it lets rock on”. He did and it worked. We did it live a few times and we dropped it from the set but it certainly stood up on the record. Yeah I was buzzing about that. I am looking forward to writing new tracks; I am really up for it at the moment. The energy is there and we’re ready to go!

Neko: You’ve also got a track called Warning, which you’ve played for a year now.

Keith: Something like that is probably – due to the internet and blah di blah – tracks like Nuclear and Trigger, they’ve been raped. I don’t know, depends, but Warning might never be anything other than what it is at the moment. Which is cool, I enjoy doing it, I love doing I actually I really do. Unfortunately they are good songs that never get the chance to develop into album tracks. Once they are out in their sort of rawer form they seem to burn out quickly, they never get the chance to evolve.

Neko: Do you think that’s because they’re out on the Internet?

Keith: I do because the Prodigy used to be about – sometimes you have to be careful with stuff like that. It is a good medium for keeping in touch and serving the people that keep you going – But the band used to, Liam would use to write a track, and I would beg him to play it even though he thought it wasn’t ready yet. Then when he dropped it he was like “yeah I need to do this to it”, and he’d drop it and be like “I need to do this” and drop it again and then it would be ready. But now you can’t do that because people are going “oh the beats don’t sound right and Keith doesn’t sound like he is doing that”. Noone fucking gives it a chance. It is like what do you want, new shit or …. you know what I mean? That perfectionism that we have doesn’t allow us to put out second hand stuff… Not second hand but you know. It is not good if something is being recorded very badly on a mobile phone that also isn’t finished. The Prodigy has got to blow your speakers up and that won’t happen if it is being recorded on a Sony-Ericsson.

Neko: You are also bringing back some older live stuff into the set, are you enjoying that?

Keith: I love what Liam has been doing with old tracks. That could be the next album. It just shows Prodigy don’t write songs for DJs. They are not disposable songs that are just there to be played by some DJs standing on front of the stage going “yeah I am the bollocks”! They are proper timeless tracks. They stand out. You’d think I’d be fucking bored with them but as soon as they come on I am like “fucking hell this is the bomb!” I really respect that, it just shows what a genius he is.

Neko: So what can we expect from the ‘Their Law’ tour?

Keith: For me I’d say expect Prodigy. On fire, tight, in action. Every country we go to we do an interview while we’re there and everyone is like “what should we expect from the show tonight?”. It is like this isn’t Britney Spears “The Cadillac tour” or “The Popcorn tour” or “The Lollipop tour” where everyone dresses up in like lollipops with 3000 marching band and a sparkling chandelier. We are a band that just goes out there and rocks it, drops as many thumping tunes as we can. It has got to sound fucking mega. It is the people who bring the energy and the vibe. It is the vibe really isn’t it. It doesn’t matter how many glitter balls you have up there, they don’t make a good show do they? They are just made in a factory whereas The Prodigy isn’t. It is nothing to expect, I am sorry it is not that we don’t give a shit, but there is just going to be 5 people on the stage, Rob, Kieron, myself, Maxim and Liam and that is it. We’re going to rock our fucking socks off, give a 110% and sweat our fucking nuts off and do it until we’re fucking sick and give everything! And the more we get back the more we will give. And it will sound fucking nuts, it will be loud and it will be thumping. And that is all I can promise. People always bring the energy, so bring that and we’ll have some fun.

Neko: You’ve gone through different eras with the different albums – do you have a particular favourite time in the last 15 years?

Keith: No not really. I must admit, I never read anything, I’ve got no memorabilia, I don’t collect anything, I don’t take photos. I am just like…. my last memory is the last show. It is not cause I don’t give a shit, I do give a shit, I’d fight to death for the band and for the people in it 100% but I am not memorabilia man. I just look to the next thing. I love every minute of it, each part of it is the most special time and the most special thing ever, but it is a progression and everything progresses. If you dwell on too much you don’t look forward… you become kind of bit slowed down… I don’t know I didn’t put that right into words. I just keep moving on, I am excited about the next album. That is it. I put on all the albums, I love them all. I think they are all mega. Each album, each era and each part is very much different and very much unique. I still live each day like it is the last and that is it. You never know where you stand. You’re only as good as your last show

Neko: A question I asked all three of you, in the Voodoo People video you did, what’s in the bag?

Keith: It is for people to make up their own mind. I think it is the demos for the next album.

Neko: Are you working on that?

Keith: Yeah we are. We’ve got like 4 tracks done, there is plenty of music, loads and loads of music there. 4 tracks is not for another 8, 12 and maybe you got an album. That is 4 tracks out of 30 or 40 we got to write, that is how you get to pick a good album. It is not here but it is on its way. And the people involved are hungry to do it. They’ve got the passion and the drive. It has been a good year for us, a lot of energy and fire breathed into the band, so we’re ready to go. Everything seems at a really good point at the moment, you know a really good feeling, so it is on it is way. It won’t be 7 years, that I do know.

(22nd October 2005 – Phone)

Neko: Over the last year you’ve played quite a lot of live shows. The year actually started when you started touring for Always Outnumbered last October, which Liam wrote pretty much on his own. At the time, was that more difficult for you to kind of adapt to these new materials, whereas maybe now where you’re working all together on new material.

Maxim: What do you mean, actually performing it?

Neko: Yeah when you look at the live show.

Maxim: Not really, no. Like I’ve said in numerous interviews it was important for us to go back in the studio and reconstruct those tracks, but once we did that it was totally cool. I’ve always stood by that point. It’s important for Keith and myself to put our personalities in the tracks rather than just tracks be written and us not having any kind of connection to them. Obviously it was a difficult period when that album was written. The contact between us wasn’t really as close as it was on previous albums, being on the road and whatever. So Liam was in the studio writing the album on his own. I used to go down to the studio and see what he was doing, but because we weren’t touring during that period it didn’t really grow with us, it just appeared.

Neko: Do you think it’s easier or different now when obviously you’re in more contact now when Liam is writing new stuff when you’re actually straight there?

Maxim: Yeah it’s a lot easier now, that’s what I’m saying. Once you’re on the road, and once you’re in the flow it’s a lot easier, things just evolve slowly, do you know what I mean? Whereas that album just kind of appeared on my doorstep… like “here’s 12 tracks”. Even though certain tracks I did see him develop in the studio as Liam was writing them. But it was just like formulated in a different way than it works best really. And how it works best is when you’re on the road and you’re touring and things just develop slowly and tunes develop while you’re trying them out in the set or whatever. And then you add little bits and you’re like, “oh that bit was good, let’s try that bit again”. And that’s the best way tunes develop really for me.

Neko: One of the tracks that has developed over the last year is Back 2 Skool. You brought it back about a year ago, and it’s changed quite a lot. At first it was just you doing your vocals and now it’s become quite different with Keith also, and it’s on the Their Law The Singles album. Is this one of the tracks you think has evolved quite a bit?

Maxim: Yeah, I mean that was like an intro track, wasn’t it?

Neko: Yeah.

Maxim: I think it was at Reading or something.

Neko: Yeah it was the “Leeds intro”, that’s what it was called.

Maxim: It was just like a small little intro, but it kind of slams. And then we just introduced it slowly, and I can’t even remember how it actually got into the set to tell you the truth. I think we were just using it as a little link in the middle of the set but it kind of dropped really well and obviously it developed into what it is now. And even in the last couple of days we did, I don’t know if you noticed, on the end of Back 2 Skool Liam slows the beats down now and we’re just working on something different at the end there. So it’s still developing now.

Neko: Dead Ken Beats is another track you’ve been playing live for about a year.

Maxim: Oh yeah.

Neko: How’s that one evolving?

Maxim: It’s not! (laughs)

No, it’s kind of like thrown in the set, taken out. Thrown in, taken out. Thrown in, taken out (laughs). It’s such a strong tune you know, but we can’t really find the right hook to go on it yet and it just needs that one hook. Sometimes I think when you analyze tunes too much, if you try too hard, and try and force a hook on it, it never happens. Sometimes you just have to leave it and let it develop itself.

Obviously I do some lyrics on there but they’re not really the lyrics for that tune… they’re just lyrics which kind of fit on it at the moment, do you know what I mean? But we need a strong hook on it really because it’s a strong tune.

Neko: Do you think now that you’re playing smaller venues again it’s going to give you more of a chance to experiment a bit more on stage than when you’re doing the big festivals?

Maxim: Yeah, it’s better. The first two shows… did you come to the first 2 shows? [Oslo and Copenhagen]

Neko: Yeah, I came to Copenhagen.

Maxim: Yeah, because I did see you, you were on the right hand side wasn’t you? Or I mean the stage left. But yeah I love doing shows like that you know because it is a totally different performance. And you don’t have to work too hard trying to cover the stage so you’ve got more time to think and you can experiment and mess around with the lyrics and the tunes and maybe try different things out on the smaller stage. Even smaller venues, like a 1,000. I love doing venues like that. Plus, for me at the moment, I can’t really move that much because I’ve done my leg in!

Neko: When did that happen? On this tour?

Maxim: Yeah, in Macedonia. I was having this massage, and this guy was stretching me and I don’t know what he’s done. He just snapped something in my leg (laughs). It just started to swell up and it hasn’t gotten any better.

So I’ve just been struggling all this tour. The worst thing will be if it gets to the point where I say, “ok maybe we shouldn’t do these dates”.

Neko: With the big UK tour coming up…

Maxim: Yeah so it’s kind of like I’ve got a couple weeks literally hopefully to get better. The thing with knees is there’s nothing you can do about them really. You just have to let them rest. So who knows? But yeah you know, performance wise I haven’t really been performing as I’d like to. So in a way being more static gives you more thinking time. It gives you a chance to; you know, experiment vocally and try different things out.

Neko: Do you think doing your own stuff has influenced the way you do Prodigy? In the way you might have experimented more with vocals, or something like that?

Maxim: Nah not at all (laughs). When I write lyrics or when we do stuff with Prodigy it’s a totally different thing than when I do my own stuff. But the actual delivery is quite similar. I like to always use double entendre lyrics, things with two different meanings and stuff. I kind of brought some of that vibe into the Prodigy. When you use less lyrics they have to be a bit more obvious and a bit more instant. If you’re writing a song you don’t have to make a point really straight away. But when you got one line, two lines in a tune they have to be instant. So I suppose it’s a bit harder really.

Neko: Is there any particular track in the current live set that you enjoy the most, or kind of a favourite of yours?

Maxim: Yeah, Spitfire. Spitfire is the ultimate track at the moment. It sums up the band. That’s exactly where we are; the sound, the vibe, you know? It’s like every tune has its moment and represents a time, and I think Spitfire just kind of represents us in this particular time. Just like when Firestarter was released, that was us at that particular time.

Neko: Which other old tracks would you like to bring back currently?

Maxim: Umm… well we can’t bring back too many old tunes because they’re too fast! (laughs) We’re not going to be able to keep up with them! (laughs) But there’s quite a few fillers you know like Benny Blanco, maybe things like that. We’re going to bring that back for the singles tour.

Neko: That’s cool.

Maxim: I’d say the singles tour is going be good once we get all the tunes in and stuff. Doing the old tunes… umm… don’t know how we’re going to get Charly in (laughs).

Neko: Liam said that as well actually.

Maxim: What, that he doesn’t know how to get Charly in? (laughs) I’m thinking that Charly and Everybody In The Place… they’re just so fast! Start The Dance you know, that’s going to be quite easy to do. As you know we do a bit of it already. Think we’ll do a longer version. And we’re going to bring in Break & Enter as well… and Jericho. So hopefully… Jericho we’re going to do tonight.

But I won’t be doing much (laughs).

Neko: I’m always missing the good ones, aren’t I?

Maxim: You’re not coming tonight?

Neko: No, I’m in London.

Maxim: Oh dear… well we’re hopefully going to do Jericho tonight. But yeah I think it’s good to bring old tunes back. But obviously the key is not to just bring them back the way they are, but to freshen them up a little bit. It makes it interesting for us as well.

Neko: What do you think about the tracks on the singles album – disc 2?

Maxim: Ahh… disc 2. The live tracks and stuff… Spitfire Live. There was another Spitfire… but I’m not too sure. When I listen to live tracks I always think, “I can do better” or “there’s better live tracks out there”. You know what I mean? I’m never happy with live tracks.

On recordings, I always listen to my own voice. I suppose most artists are like that. But I always hear myself on live tracks and think, “ah we can do a better recording than that”. In a way it would have been good to have something like Radio 1 kind of tracks or versions on there, but obviously that’s a lot later. Bit too late for that. But that kind of version is just a lot tighter. But no, I’m quite happy with the tunes that are on there really.

Neko: How do you feel about the remixes that have come out as singles?

Maxim: The remixes… the Pendulum mix and the…

Neko: Yeah, and the Out Of Space one.

Maxim: I think the remixes are really good. I was expecting something a bit different to what the Audio Bullys did with the Out of Space mix, but my favorite remix is the Pendulum one. It’s a drum & bass style with an electro feel. Pendulum are really good and I like their latest single too. I think the video really fits the tune.

Neko: How did you enjoy the video?

Maxim: It was good. It was cool because the whole idea was not to be in it really. And it kind of came across right. It was more like um… obviously because it’s a remix tune it’s not totally about us being in the video. The concept of the whole tune… ‘cause you know the tune is quite a like “moving tune”, It’s kind of like a movie soundtrack tune, I think. And it was important to have something that represented that, whether it was a car chase or whatever, and I think the director picked the right thing there. Now I was glad I wasn’t in it really. It was the quickest video shoot I’ve ever done (laughs). That’s my acting debut as well… not very good as you can see (laughs). No it’s cool, I’m really pleased with it.

Neko: What was in the bag?

Maxim: What’s in the bag?

Neko: Yes.

Maxim: My bag?

Neko: No, the one at the end… the prize.

Maxim: Oh… don’t you know?

Neko: No.

Maxim: It’s drugs (laughs).

Neko: Is it?

Maxim: I didn’t even notice a bag at the end.

(laughing)

Neko: Everybody’s wondering what was in the bag.

Maxim: Whatcha mean?

Neko: At the end you know when Sharkey runs up, she gets a bag, it’s a prize.

Maxim: Yeah but it’s money, isn’t it?

Neko: You don’t know.

Maxim: Ah…

Neko: It’s a mystery.

Maxim: We’re gonna have a sequel. (laughs) To be continued…

Neko: Ok looking forward to it. Just one last thing, you’re quite involved in the whole website stuff. Are you quite involved in also the whole, you know, what’s on the website, and that kind of stuff?

Maxim: Kind of go through phases, you know. We all try to get involved. You know we’re not really like website people, are we? As far as technology goes I’m probably the most connected in that way to computers. I mean Liam’s become more and more computer orientated now. But I remember years ago when we’d try to get him onto Logic. It would be like, “come on man you’ve got to get Logic”. And he’d be like, “no, no”. But like now he’s more computerized. But Keith’s not really that inclined you know. But we try to get our input in on the website stuff. We kind of just relay the information to Theresa and she puts things on there. But it’s more important just for the fans, you know what I mean? To give them something back. It’s important I know to try and update it and whatever (laughs). You know that’s the hardest part for us!

As you know because obviously you’ve got your website and whatever, you know it’s kind of like… we wanted to let people know… because one of the things is when you see things in the media and so forth, and people read about certain things that are going on in the band “the band’s splitting up” or “they’re not going to do another album”. It’s kind of important that the fans see it, hear it from the horse’s mouth. That’s the whole idea of the website really. Let people know what’s happening, and just put it up there to give the real information, and keep it fresh. That’s the reason we updated it and slightly changed it again.

And we’re going to have this thing where we can actually take pictures on the road and put it on the website.

So you can send it from your phone, no matter where you are. And I’ve got this phone, this Nokia phone at the moment… this bad phone. Although you probably see I’m never off it. But it’s good to take pictures on the road and then we can put them on the website and the fans can see exactly what’s happening on the road, do you know what I mean? (laughs) So don’t be surprised if you’re on there! (laughs)

But you know you can send it straight to the website and it’s up there like instantly, rather than having to wait to get back home and putting it on. So hopefully that will be in place in a couple of weeks. And also we can send texts and videos as well. Little clips of videos and stuff. So literally as we come off stage we can be like “this is the crowd, we’re in so forth and so forth” and put it straight up there you know, instantly.

So yeah I suppose websites are quite important, especially in these times where everything is quite global and everything is so instant and the world has just shrunk. Russia doesn’t seem as far anymore, Lithuania doesn’t seem as far, Australia doesn’t seem as far. People can get in contact with you really quickly. So world wide it’s important to have a good website.

All interviews by Andrea Schnepf aka neko.

Thanks for help with transcribing to ‘bigsugar316′ and ‘ant4000b’

neko: This isn’t the first time that you’ve returned with a new album and a totally new sound. For the previous albums though, you used to experiment with different versions of tracks. This time around though, you just disappeared and came back and said ‘this is it, this is the new album’. How was this different this time? Did it feel like you had to be on your own to write this album without anyone interfering with it?

Liam Howlett: All the tracks on the album went through changes, just the same as before, I have to live with them a while and go back to them and then make changes. They get played in the car, to my friends and put them on at night when I’m drinking and partying.

As I said in the past it will be inevitable that at some point in the future there will be a Prodigy album with like singles, remixes and demos. I really want to make that kind of record into something that people will want to hear, you know, with the different versions on it .the actual writing process has always been the same—on my own. I seem to be more creative if it’s just me, at least for the initial vibe anyway.

The tracks will change again once we’re starting to play them live. About 80-90% of the tracks we played live have changed over time – apart from the likes of Firestarter, SMBU which were more or less there and the rest we did in the studio to change arrangements and stuff. This time around I was in this really good headspace and didn’t want to get influenced by the live show and do it like with a band; that was more Jilted and The Fat of the Land. If I did that, I would have slipped back into a ‘Nuclear’ and ‘Babys got a Temper’ phase, and I didn’t want to do that again.

If you listen to the new album now you have tracks like ‘Wake Up’, ‘Spitfire’, ‘Hotride’ and stuff like that. They are all tracks that are going to be rocking live, you know.

And on that basis, they’re no different, they still have the same energy as TFOTL and I don’t think that much has changed. Although, when I’m in the studio – in my head I actually visualize how a track is going to sound live.

Do you think all of the new tracks could be played live? You’ve mentioned about 6 would be played live but then I can imagine this will probably also get moved around.

Yeah. I think I wouldn’t want to play all of the new tracks live, because about 30% of the album is really Liam Howlett. Like, the track I did with Liam Gallagher, ‘Shoot Down’, that was definitely more on my side. But the rest of the album is more the band, you know.

With the number of vocal collaborators on AONO – you had Juliette Lewis, Liam Gallagher, Twista, Paul Jackson – what was the writing process of these lyrics? Did you input anything into the writing process or did you just produce the music and say to them “there you go”.

I was actually in the studio with most of them, apart from Twista. I spoke to him on the phone a lot, but that was kind of weird because I usually like to be in the same room. It’s good to quickly try a different idea if shit isn’t working, but it was fine, it worked. He gave three versions of the track and that worked out well.

I had input to some ideas, but everyone put their own ideas into the lyrics. They were fine with that their vocals weren’t going to be used in a traditional way on the album but maybe just a line like a sampled vocal, so that worked out quite well.

What happened in the end to ‘No Souvenirs’ [the collaboration with Rob del Naja from Massive Attack]? I already asked this in the last interview, but have to ask again now …

I really, really wanted it to be on the album, I spoke about it so much now. We were going to get back to it, but Rob was on tour. He was going to do some new vocals for it, because that’s what he wanted to do, I did some new music. So by the time we had done the new vocals we sat down, but felt the track had lost its original vibe. But at that stage it was literally the last week of recording for the album. But it will definitely get finished at some point.

So will people get to hear it?

Yeah, people will hear it, I think, also the original version – probably both of them. It still didn’t get finished, but once we’re happy with it, it will – it may be on a future release or album.

Are there any other collaborations that didn’t make it onto the album? What about the one with Noreaga? And wasn’t there a second one with Kool Keith as well?

That’s right, yeah. The second one I did with Kool Keith was actually a part of ‘Girls’ – at the end of ‘Girls’. It was basically all the beats of ‘Girls’ all slowed down and Kool Keith came in and did like one verse of lyrics. But in the end that didn’t work, so that got shelved. But there is also still the ‘Wake Up Call’ full vocals version.

Noreaga – I really wanted to work with him. By the time it finished it, it sounded very dated like he was talking about hummers and shit, you know like, it wasn’t really Prodigy, it was more like straight hip hop, it didn’t sound twisted enough. The lyrics just weren’t right for the album even though his flow u can’t fuck with. Also, I didn’t want to have collaboration after collaboration. In my mind the way I used vocals, they were more used as samples, I didn’t really want any more full vocal tracks, you know.

Then also Peaches, I did a track with Peaches really early on. I have much respect for her, but basically it didn’t work out. She put some vocals down but there wasn’t enuff ,By the time I went back to do more work on it she couldn’t find anymore time, she was doing her album and touring .

Surely you must have been aware that the album got leaked on the Internet quite early on. How did you react to that?

Very frustrated. Very frustrated for sure. [pauses] I think that fans often only see as far as that they want to have the record, they download it and then they have it. They don’t see the implications of what it has to the band. If the fan then buys the record – that’s cool. If someone liked the band and then downloads the record – if I’d downloaded a record I probably wouldn’t buy it – this then has an impact on the perception of the record, you know what I mean, that things aren’t as good as they should be. But I’m quite relaxed about it now to be honest. My main thing for the Prodigy is still – as long as we can take the music live – that’s what’s important for the band.

If, for example, no one had bought the album and loads of people had downloaded it then it would be a problem because promoters wouldn’t have known how successful it was. Promoters go after successful records, you know, they don’t go and see how many people have downloaded it. That has a roll on effect on if a band gets booked for gigs so that part was quite frustrating for me.

I guess, XL weren’t as tight as they should have been in this whole thing, you know releasing promos and that. But, you know, fuck it, the record did well, and in the end everyone is in the same boat. So, I’m kinda cool with it now.

Have the reactions to the album been what you expected?

Absolutely. It was never going to be The Fat of the Land part 2 and I think people who know me know that I don’t do the same thing over and again. I don’t really read all the reactions, because I know in the studio what makes a good record. I read a few things though. But you know what really made me laugh, was when someone downloaded it in really bad quality mp3 and then was moaning about the production of it. The production of the record was different than the last one, this is more trashy sounding. People have to understand that if my record sounds like that, that is how I want it.

Now that the album has been released, is there anything you would change about it?

I wish that the track I’ve done with Keith last week, ‘Warning’, I wish that had been on the record. Very early on in the process of writing this album we made the decision to take the focus off Keith, work on a record that was very much back to the beats, back to the samples, know what I mean. But If I had written that track 8 months ago, it would have been on the record, coz it feels fresh. Can’t really think of anything I would have changed, no, I’m quite happy with it. I really enjoyed writing this record, it was a good experience.

Does that track ‘Warning’ fit into the same kind of vibe as AONO?

I don’t really know –I think it retains the right twisted humour and it knows what it is. It isn’t trying to be punk, it just is. ‘Warning’ is still evolving and Keith definitely sounds good on it. The lyrics are cheeky as fuck,

One of them is:

‘im not a punk
im just a cunt
if im talking to you
im probably drunk’

It’s a hooligan song. Keith has always been a good lyrics writer, I always thought that. Also with his project Flint , but that was much darker. It wasn’t right for the Prodigy, but it was good.

Are you planning to play it live at the upcoming live shows then?

Yeah, definitely, second track, watch out for it.

You also mentioned that there was a new track with Maxim and Keith, which was the fastest track you had ever done. Is this the same as ‘Warning’?

Yeah, it’s the same track. It started off with 175bpm, but its now 166bpm. We all were in the studio to rock it, and Keef seemed to have the vocals covered on his own. It wasn’t like “ok both will have to do lyrics”, because it often just complicates things and I wanted it to be simple to rock it live for people to get it first time they hear it.

Are there any other new tracks apart from ‘Warning’ you’ve written since the release?

Quite a few, but I’m kind of sitting on them, because we’ve got a set we’re happing with. But, I’m just in a really good writing mode at the moment! Ever since writing the album, you know. It’s not like after The Fat of The Land where I just didn’t want to go back, I’m now actually really excited to be back in the studio, it’s weird.

I guess it’s got a lot to do with my headspace and using Reason for this record and the album’s just come out. One important thing to say about Reason though, a lot of people think I did everything on Reason, but in reality I just use Reason as a notepad to write demos and then everything is done on Protools. Then it’s mixed back through analogue valve equipment. The sound of Reason doesn’t really have anything to do with the album; it just helps me to write down ideas very quickly.

They have these things called Soft Synths on Reason that try to duplicate the sound of old analogue keyboards- I never used these, I always use the real deal. A bit technical, but it had to be said!

You’ve included Keith on ‘Warning’ and Maxim also on the track ‘More Girls’, does that mean they will be back now on new material?

Keef is on warning and I’m doing new shit with Maxim as well.

Basically this album gives everyone a bit of breathing space.

Maxim and Keith, everyone expected them to be front men again for this album, so I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to do something different instead. Now that people aren’t thinking that they’re going to be on it, I want to get back together and bring them back again, you know what I mean? And that’s the way it is. And the other thing is, if tracks don’t work out, then they just don’t work, you know. you can’t force an idea just for the sake of it. That’s another reason why they’re not on it. In the ‘Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned’ sessions there were just no Maxim and Keith tracks. Tracks like ‘Wake Up Call’ and ‘Girls’, they were more – pushing it, you know. And people do need to understand, I just didn’t want to keep repeating myself, I just can’t do that. But the reason we’ve gone back into the studio for this ‘Warning’ track is because its working, it feels natural.

But, I mean yeah, the whole idea of like, me writing this record and Keith doing this whole solo thing has led to the confusion about “Are they going to be on the record? Are they not? Has the band split up?”, and all that shit. So it’s now time to say “Here we are, playing live, and making music, I like to turn it on its head. It will be rocking!”

With regards to playing live, we heard that Leeroy would be there again to DJ at some of the shows….

Yeah! Basically Leeroy wanted to get involved again – and Leeroy is just great to have around, you know, his jokes and all. But he definitely didn’t want to come back as a dancer, he was absolutely sure about that. He just wanted to be involved with the band. And Leeroy is a DJ now; this is what he does now anyway. I think he just came back from Taiwan or something like that, you know, so we just try and get him along as much as possible.

Apart from Leeroy, are you planning to have any specific support acts on tour with you or are you just going with local bands wherever you are?

We haven’t picked UK ones yet – this is still a while away really. But on the European tour we really just try and get whoever is cool locally, it’s good to support the local bands. Yeah, I get sent a lot of tapes, but it’s also up to the promoters. Sometimes we get a choice to say, but often we don’t. But even if they’re no good, we usually don’t get there until just before we’re about to play anyways.

So what about the old material? Are you going to update it in any way? You said somewhere that you were never going to play ‘Firestarter’ in its original form again …

This is not ready yet, I know you will probably go to a few gigs so you will probably hear the transition to a new ‘Firestarter’. It will be something maybe bootleg style. Keith basically said he didn’t want to do it in its original form any more, so definitely by the UK tour I will be chopping the older tunes around, you know. For the first few gigs we really just want the new stuff from the new album sounding right, so we felt like, we can still change the older sound after,– if it works ‘Firestarter’ will be done by the UK tour.

So you’re still also going to play stuff from Jilted?

Yeah, definitely!

Any plans to play some stuff from Experience at all?

Ha ha ha. Nah, I don’t think so. Basically, we all kind of said, out of all the tracks ‘ Jericho ‘ is definitely the only track we could still do live, but we’re not going to do that. We may still play it on the UK tour, you know. I respect the old tracks, it’s all cool…

I told a few people that I was going to do this interview and everyone said “Tell him to play Experience tracks again!”….

[laughs] Which ones?

I think you’d get away with any of them …

‘Weather Experience’, I guess, that track always kind of works live. Definitely ‘Prodigy Dancer’ [‘Death of The Prodigy Dancer'], a proper version of that would be cool – How long have you been into the band?

‘Out of Space’ kind of era…

I guess we could play that as well, that’s another track – [surprised] quite a few now! But I think the first few gigs now has to be the new album and getting it to sound right.

So how are you feeling about getting back on tour again, are you excited about it?

Totally, yeah. I’m really looking forward to it!

We were going to go to the States before Christmas but that’s not happening anymore, we haven’t got time anymore so that will be next year now.

But yeah, I am really quite excited – we’ve been working on the set for the last two weeks, reworking the tracks, getting the vocals ready and all that.

Are you planning to bring any of your collaborators on stage with you?

Ahm, our main thing to be honest at the moment – it is really important for the three of us to get our shit sorted now. All of us are well into it and want to make it the best it can be.

I think we don’t really need to bring other people in, especially not now for the first months. I’d like to see Paul on stage at some point though, to do ‘Action Radar’…

Are you going to play this track live at all?

i won’t play it unless Paul does it. It’s the Paul vocals. Keith and Maxim doing that track – Nah, wouldn’t feel right. I don’t think it’s really a Maxim track.

We’re not taking Paul around Europe , but we may do some gigs in the UK with him if we can work it out – you like that track, don’t you…?

Yeah!

Yeah, it’s going to be remixed. I’m excited how the tracks can evolve now for live .I guess it’s the same for a lot of bands, changing arrangements and speeds of tunes to fit in with the right vibe. I’ve worked on ‘Wake Up’ and ‘Girls’, they kind of sound the same but they are more pumped – it gives it a different fresh angle.

You had some very promising fills you used to play at live shows in your ‘Nuclear / Trigger’ period two or three years go, ‘Goblin’, ‘Dust Yoself’ and an intro you played at Leeds and Reading. Are you still planning to use these again at some point?

Basically, ‘Goblin’ was this very slow kind of track, it worked pretty well as what it was, but I don’t think it’s sounded Prodigy enough to become a full track. We may still try and work on that, but we haven’t really got there yet.

‘Dust Yoself’ is rockin, off the hook, the track has potential. It’s quite bootleggy, . Maybe that can be used again, I don’t know, I liked doing it live, I think it worked.

The Leeds and Reading intro is very old skool, kind of like back in 1996 breakbeat era.

I know it’s quite a favourite with the fans. I like the beats, the beats were good and some of the parts, but it needs updating. It just didn’t flow enough when I took it to the studio so it didn’t really go any further.

You’re next single is going to be Hotride, have you got a video planned for it?

We’re just doing it now. I hate doing videos, you know, because you’re basically laying all your trust in a fucking video director. I fucking hate it; we’ve been let down so many times.

Hotride is gonna be a limited edition ep, we aren’t going for a big push to get in the singles charts, I don’t give a shit about that. I would much rather release a good 4-5 track ep in the future.

I think that the ‘Girls’ video in my opinion was different, it worked and suited the tune cause it was kind of cut and paste 80s influenced .those guys were cool who did that video ,they were the same dudes who did the cover .

Making videos is usually stressful though; you can’t go back and get it changed ,there are deadlines to meet. So I personally hate doing videos. I wish there was a way I could do it myself and be directing it and be in control.

Usually you get sent a so called treatment from the video directors and it can read really well on paper. But it’s such a different thing than the video you get back.

It was the same when we first saw the SMBU video without any of the effects, I fucking hated it. It was very straight forward filming, it was nothing, it was just someone walking around with a camera through London . So it all went back and they did all these mad effects to make it seem drug induced then it made sense to me ,it blew my mind .

One video that you did change though was the ‘Firestarter’ one. I always wanted to know what the original one was like?

Haha. Basically what happened was, we saw an advert we all really liked, we liked the effects. It was early days, it was before anyone really had done any of this grainy kind of stuff. It was this really degraded film they had used. So we approached them, I think it was their first music video.

What really didn’t work was Keith had his hands tied behind his back so he was totally restricted and Keith is good when he’s moving about. You’re really not getting the best out of him that way. So basically, they tied him up and he was there just doing the vocals into the camera.

So that was bad, but also then for every downbeat there was an old tyre bouncing to the boom, it was a fuckin joke. I said to the director ‘you ain’t putting that fukin tyre to that beat, it deserves more!’ .I can’t even remember being in it, me and the other guys, it was that shit. I wish I could play it to people, I’ve been looking for it but I can’t find it anymore. I’ve been looking for it to show people how shit it was!

At that stage, we were really lucky, because we had made the video really ahead of time. And we had the extra two weeks to phone Walter up and go like “Help us out here, mate, we really need another video”. We kind of had wanted a new director, we thought we had done enough with him, but then he basically got him back again, and we knew we could trust him. He pulled it out the bag with Firestarter, it is filmed on cheap film as well if u look at it.

It’s the performance and the direction that makes it work.

Basically, the way I feel about videos is id rather not have one than have a shit one.

So Walter is not doing music videos anymore then?

It was different when Walter Stern was doing it because he knew us all really well. But Walter is not doing videos at the moment, we miss having him. he is doing films for now but I’m sure I will get him back to do something again later on.

Talking about videos, are you planning to release a DVD with live material?

Yeah, absolutely, we really want to do all this. Basically, what we are doing now is all the live shows are being recorded and then we’ll see what’s going to come out.

But this thing about Maverick. It really struck me as odd that they had sold only 16.000 records in the first week. We sold more in the first day here! I told them I could have sold more out the back of a van myself! And basically, they haven’t done any promotion to promote the album at all to be honest, nothing…

You have a street team …

Oh, yeah, they’re really on the ball, they really know what’s going on, right! [laughs]

Maverick got bought out by Warner Brothers – and basically our record came out at a really bad time. Obviously I know everyone’s moaning because of record sales down and everything. I know that there are more than 16.000 fukin people in America in one week interested to buy our album, but no one even knew it was out. Maverick totally screwed us and I’m really angry with them. I know we would have sold more albums. They should’ve just fucking told us in time that they were not going to do anything about it and we could have released it ourselves, you know, via XL in the States.

We are only with a major in America cause they had the muscle. Do u think I like being on a major?

We maybe should have done more ourselves to promote it but I think they didn’t know what the fuck to do with it on a street level, they only really deal in pop shit.

I cant see future albums being on Maverick , definitely not. But you know we will go over there and do some gigs soon. Lack of communication, it’s one of the main downfalls. I think they should just re-release the album and promote it properly. And America is like a fuckin huge country. We’re just really angry at the moment; they’ve really let us down. If we had sold like 50.000 albums, that would have probably been ok, comparing the time, you know with the band having been away for so long and record sales being down in general. That would have still been more in line with what we’d expected. Maverick still have a job to do promoting this record. I’m more angry about that than any Internet leak or anything. I mean it went to top 10 in most European countries, people here knew it was out.

So does that mean you’re going to write a new album quite soon so you’ve got something new to release?

I’m gonna be writing all the time now because I love it. What it will lead to we will see but I know I wont let the touring affect my writing again. It’s important to me to be spontaneous with what we do now, shit like putting white labels out of new tracks etc.

I said I’d like to do an album of work we have done so far but with new tracks, remixes and demos, like a cool special package for the people. Wait and see.

Interview by Andrea Schnepf aka neko / 28th September 2004

“if i was in world war 2 ,they’d call me spitfire!” Liam Prodigy