:raises hand:

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ya im fairly excited......prodigy are awesome..love their style!!
but from what i read from mixmag the style has changed a lil bit!

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London Loud | Sense.fm
Prog House | Tech House | Techno | Minimal

Well...
It's the only Prodigy album I couldn't listen to all the way through.

The songs are slow, repetitive, harsh and they all recycle the same idea. The songs are "heavy" without any real content (if that makes any sense).

I hope the second part will be better but I'm really starting to regret putting my money on this.

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Latest releases:
Endless Cycles [Capital Heaven]
The Charlatan [Morphosis]

the prodigy have done some amazing work. during the course of their career theyve always done something new and different, staying different from the pack. im fortunate enough to own most of their singles and the three albums on 12" vinyl.

ive only heard about half of the new album, and to sum their new work up in the words of a mate:

"imagine if felix da housecat and green velvet had a love child, and that love child is 22, high on coke, and has eaten 100 rice cakes and is now constipated"

the trouble is, the new album has lost the spark - no, the bonfire - that the other three albums had, perhaps because of the lack of keith and maxim - this album was completely howlett, i personally think he's tried to go for the whole electro-punk-clash-techno angle that Basement Jaxx pulled off perfectly with their new release Kish Kash. however where jaxx were successfull, howlett's pretty much failed.

Can't say I really enjoy it, but I didn't like any of the Prodigy albums much on first listen. They grew on me massively.

Spitfire is pretty good, with an ace beat and lots of trademark Prodigy samples going around, but why Keith Flint couldn't have screamed "If I was in world-war two they'd call me Spitfire!" instead of that hick actress?

Girls is the track that sounds most like old Prodigy, a lot like SMBU but with a more hip-hop flavour- pretty good. Memphis Belles is just a bit crap, ever so slightly like an Orbital track.

Get Up Get Off is absolutely horrible. Twista sounds like Sir Mixalot sped up and raps far too fast for the lurching breakbeat to keep up. And the vocalist who did those fantastic soaring Indian vocals on SMBU is totally fucking wasted as Howlett electronically distorts her voice into a screeched chorus that is too annoying for words.

Hotride sounds like Faithless- Mass Destruction performed on dustbins lids in the background, but the track is actually a punkish cover of some old 70s song about floating away in a balloon. Once again with hick actress on vocals, but why? Keith Flint sounded more raw and punkish on Fuel My Fire, which this track is just an inferior version of.

Wake Up Call is one of the best tracks. Kool Keith sounds as wickedly cool as ever on vocals, and there's an awesome flute sample that sounds like a weird electric guitar at times. Neverthless, Maxim could have done his job just as well, and Kool Keith is pretty wasted here, compared to his truly outstanding rapping on Diesel Power. This track also has some samples that sound like Claustrophobic Sting, but alas no 303s.

Action Radar is one hell of a weird tracks. To start off with it sounds like a sample of a train leaving the station, before morphing into a cheesy breakbeat/bassline combo that sounds like it belongs on the Doom 2 soundtrack. And the vocals are just punkish shouting, much like Keith Flint on Firestarter, but it's a woman, and it just doesn't work.

Medusa's Path is atmospheric and damn cool. It reminds me a fair bit of Climbatize, which is no bad thing. Lots of soaring Arabian sounding strings throughout. Phoenix is a slow, dull track with a totally out of place vocal sample, and some vaguely Middle-Eastern synths.

You'll be Under My Wheels is the music from the new BMW advert, and it sounds pretty much the same as that, but with some scratchy and treated guitars, and Kool Keith chanting "I rock I rock I rock, I roll..." and so on. Not bad but the repeated return to that annoying sample breaks it up somewhat.

The Way It Is is one of my favourites tracks, because it samples Thriller by Jacko in a brilliant way. Where the sample is played, it sounds like a totally amazing acid rework of that track, but Howlett keeps dragging the track of into other directions. Still good, but he should have just remixed Thriller and kept his own hooks out of it, which would have sounded so much better.

Shoot Down is just a bizarre track. It sounds a helluva lot like Setting Sun by the Chemical Brothers, with a very similar beat, and of course an electronically distorted Gallagher on vocals. Liam here, though, doesn't match his brother's hypnotic contribution to the Chem Bros track. He just whines and shouts through this track, almost as if he's trying to show how alternative he is. In other words, totally wasting his talent. Also it uses a truly bizarre piano sample in places that sounds like it belongs in the Silent Hill soundtrack. And those fantastic sirens that made Setting Sun aren't there either.

Anyways, the album has nothing on their last two, and it's not even as good as the very patchy Experience. Howlett drenches the track in left-field beats and loops of loud, brash noise to try and keep things aggressive, but take that away and it's built on badly realised samples, and vocal covers of old tracks, only with new vocalists. Why Liam why? Either sample the original, or do a bloody decent job of covering it. I put it down to his inability to write lyrics that makes him grave-rob other tracks for lyrics to work into the tracks. There's far too few originally created samples, none of the beats are really fast enough to recapture the energy of old Prodigy albums and there's no bloody contribution by two perfectly good vocalists- Keith and Maxim!

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Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

really big disapointment I got it to my birhtday. Not only that the typical "prodigy" touch is missing, sound quality is worse than "Fat of the land" which came out 1998 ( or 1996 ? ). It's a nice album for some breakbeat electro stuff, but a shame for the prodigy...



Trancevision

Thanks for your detailed review on that, SYSTEM-J.

I had some really funny visual moments in my head... esp. the Michael Jackson "Thriller" bit. I believe that part was actually recreated in the studio and not sampled, but yes, it does sound close. Liam Howlett called up some people originally involved with that MJ song (a shame, I do not know their names? ) and they worked on it.

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Disappointing, I don't really like this

Without a doubt their best tracks are 'Smack My Bitch Up' and 'Breathe' still listen to them fairly often.

Hated it the first Time i heard it but......

Listened to it once still hated it...

3rd listen coming around....

Now its stuck in my car cd player on repeat

Now I cant get the tracks out of my head, it really is a wicked album, give it time. The style has evolved into something else, something special.

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quote:

Originally posted by aspergian Thanks for your detailed review on that, SYSTEM-J. I had some really funny visual moments in my head... esp. the Michael Jackson "Thriller" bit. I believe that part was actually recreated in the studio and not sampled, but yes, it does sound close. Liam Howlett called up some people originally involved with that MJ song (a shame, I do not know their names? ) and they worked on it.

Matt Robertson and Rinse, according to my inlay. Apparently Thriller was written by Rob Temperton though... maybe the other two were producers for Jacko.

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Mixes:
> Maximum Elevation [Progressive House]
> DI.FM 26th Anniversary Guest Mix [Progressive House]
> Live @ Dance:Love:Hub London, 11.10.2025
> Higher Peaks [Progressive House]
> Dance:Love:Hub Afterparty (The Return) 23.11.24

Like these sets? Come see me play live at Kibosh in Manchester: https://www.instagram.com/kibosh.mcr/

Yea this album is great found pounding out the toonage in the car... really loud.... just kills the amount of bass found in crappy hip-hop music.... there's bass written all over this album..

but seriously though, I do see how this album is repetitive. The counter-acting thing about it, is that I could see some of these tracks doing amazingly in a huge niteclub soundsystem.... I'd love to get alot of these on vinyl. And yea, I really hope another Prodigy release isn't too far away. It sounds great, and can't stop now!

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