The records don't have to be really commercial every time, as long as they follow the Prodigy rules - that they're hard and 'in your face'. I wondered if Liam had any ideas why this hadn't happened to them: "We never look for success, but I'd say we're at a level now where we've got a following, and people respect what we're doing. However, this problem just doesn't seem to have affected The Prodigy. Of course, many bands progress musically, only to find with dismay that their changing style alienates their original fans. A lot of people thought it was the best thing we've done, especially people at Radio One, who did support it quite a lot - maybe to show that they were more in touch with youth culture.". "I was very surprised, but I was more surprised that more people didn't comment on how we'd gone away from what we were doing before. Given that The Prodigy's new material is, by Liam's own admission, less overtly commercial than their first offerings, I wondered if he and the band had been surprised by the runaway success of 'Firestarter'? The new direction is a whole mixture of good street alternative dance music." After I'd finished writing Jilted, I basically reassessed the whole thing, and thought 'yeah, that's the more credible side' and ditched the corny rave thing.
"I hoped that people would accept Jilted Generation, as half of it was quite safe, but the other side, the unsafe part, was the better side: 'Poison' 'Their Law' the really dirty stuff. It became a bit of a joke to us, and then, one night in Scotland, on stage, in front of about six thousand lunatics with white gloves on, I found myself thinking, 'What am I doing here? I'm not into this'. We started as a rave act, because that's what we were into then, but as time passed, the rave scene went under, and we got bored with the whole thing. Alternative music as a whole, really, incorporating rock, hip‑hop, and the more dirty side of dance music - not clean stuff. I began by asking Liam to elaborate on the reasons for the group's progression from their early, commercial‑sounding techno style to something altogether grittier: "When I started on Music For The Jilted Generation, I found a new vibe with the alternative dance scene. When the band's single 'Firestarter' hit the number one spot recently, with its stark video and hard sound, it seemed that a very different chapter was beginning in The Prodigy's career. Once I had got used to my surroundings, I resisted an urge to start the interview with questions about The Prodigy's 1991 hit 'Charly' - after all, times have changed considerably since The Prodigy were seen as the head of a brief musical fad by the name of 'cartoon techno' for sampling phrases from a British 1970s child awareness cartoon and layering them over a techno backing.
The initial impression is of a Mayan temple populated with hi‑tech keyboards and samplers - and then you notice some of the other, somewhat incongruous decor: the spiral staircase, the enormous TV, and the full‑sized Dalek, seemingly awaiting revenge on the evil Americans who reduced Doctor Who to a bit player in a soap. Liam Howlett's Earthbound Studios is an impressive sight. I tracked down The Prodigy's musical mastermind, Liam Howlett, at his home studio in darkest Essex to see how the band create their music, and to discuss their new musical style, which is continuing to develop as Liam works on the forthcoming, as‑yet‑untitled Prodigy album. Despite their increasingly uncompromising take on dance music, the band continue to enjoy both critical acclaim and popular success - and all without losing the respect of their hardcore underground following, too. Remarkably, the group has achieved its success without becoming enmeshed in the trappings of stardom, or having to devise an image suitable for the teenage music press. With album sales at over the two million mark, The Prodigy (Liam Howlett, Maxim Reality, Keith Flint, and Leeroy Thornhill) have reached heights unscaled by many other artists making out‑and‑out '90s dance music. Paul Nagle tackles some burning topics of modern music‑making with the group's aural architect Liam Howlett. Essex dance outfit The Prodigy have long outgrown their pure rave beginnings, and their recent number one single, 'Firestarter' points the way to a new, even harder sound.