New Prodigy Album/Tour

[Malcy]

Tour starts in Glasgow same day as the new album No Tourists is released.

The Prodigy Tour Dates 2018:
Fri 2 Nov – SSE Hydro, Glasgow
Sat 3 Nov – Motorpoint Arena, Nottingham
Mon 5 Nov – Brighton Centre
Tue 6 Nov – Plymouth Pavillions
Thu 8 Nov – Echo Arena, Liverpool
Fri 9 Nov – Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
Sat 10 Nov – Birmingham Arena
Tue 13 Nov – First Direct Arena, Leeds
Wed 14 Nov – Alexandra Palace, London
Thu 15 Nov – Alexandra Palace, London

Tickets for The Prodigy's 2018 tour go on sale at 9:30am on Fri 31 Aug.

Also a lot of options for buying the album. Out on CD, vinyl and cassette. Always look forward to a Prodigy album. Must be 5 or 6 years since the last one.
https://theprodigy.tmstor.es

[monkfromhavana]

The music is going to be some shouty lyrics over a block rocking beat with a bit of guitar. The live show is going to be 50-year old Keith arsing around on stage trying to pretend he's not a pub-owning hunt supporter.

[imitationleather]

And everyone in the audience apart from you will be a teenager.

[Paaaaul]

The most disappointing act I've ever seen live.
They basically just play a CD, and dance.

And their music had been largely shit for 20 years.

[Delete Delete Delete]

This is what the gig will look and sound like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSvIIIAdnOY&t=11s

[Johnny Textface]

Liam Howlett should be doing the kind of stuff Chris Clark is doing. Instead he seems to be writing the same dance tune /drum sample over and over. Shame because the early stuff was great. Not excited.

[Sebastian Cobb]

Last time I heard them they sounded like an even shitter version of Pendulum. Screechy sawtooths all over the shop.

[Z]

Pitchfork gave these guys a bad review a few days ago, I assume they're not worth checking out?

[Johnny Textface]

Pitchfork gave these guys a bad review a few days ago, I assume they're not worth checking out?

MFTJG is class

[monkfromhavana]

MFTJG is class

As is Experience snd half of FOTL.

[dontrunyoullfall]

Saw them at a festival, Leeds or Reading, they were pretty woeful and then they unleashed a Madness cover, it was desperately sad. All that noise and fury signifying nothing, etc.

[Custard]

The last album was The Day Is My Enemy, from 3 year ago

Sadly, it was huge plops. The title track was alright, though

[up_the_hampipe]

WELL I FOR ONE LIKE THE PRODIGY

[Malcy]

I really liked Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned. Their best tracks for me are when they get good features. That album had Twista, Juliette Lewis, Kool Keith & Liam Gallagher.

Don't think there's a tracklist for this one yet.

[Cuntbeaks]

Shit for cunts, about as edgy as a circle.

[Beagle 2]

I loved them up right up until Firestarter, then thought "okay, if this is the kind of thing they want to do for this album or whatever", and then that was their entire schtick for the next 700 tired years.

The most disappointing act I've ever seen live.
They basically just play a CD, and dance.

To be fair, a lot of dance acts just play the CD.

[up_the_hampipe]

Shit for cunts, about as edgy as a circle.

Who says they're trying to be edgy at this point? They're just making bouncy music.

[Bogbrainedmurphy]

The most disappointing act I've ever seen live.
They basically just play a CD, and dance.

And their music had been largely shit for 20 years.

I think I'd agree with that, saw them at (what appeared to be a vastly overcrowded) Manchester Apollo a good few years ago now and it was like watching a sub-par metal band.

[Paaaaul]

I loved them up right up until Firestarter, then thought "okay, if this is the kind of thing they want to do for this album or whatever", and then that was their entire schtick for the next 700 tired years.

To be fair, a lot of dance acts just play the CD.

And the good ones, like Underworld and Daft Punk, actually produce exciting, innovative live shows.

[the]

This "they just play a CD" accusation (when no live PA would now have an excuse to do that in the DAW age) is deliberately ignorant and flippant about how live audio is usually put together, and just feeds that shitty 'real music wot is a band' cynicism about electronic music. If you find them lazy and formulaic in their old age then at least be technologically accurate about saying so.

It seems especially unfitting for The Prodigy, being one of the few dance acts that would actually do a live PA in the early days (or roughly as much of a live PA as was technologically viable back then, with one musician and unsequenced hardware).

I haven't seen them live since the late 90s, but looking through random YT live videos it looks like they still bother to put on a bit of a show.

Anyway, yeah they've been musically treading water for ages, diminishing returns etc etc. There were still a few tracks worth bothering with on Invaders, less so on the last one (just fleeting sections that were rushy). I'm still always interested to hear what they do come out with though.

New song here, more of a headnodder than usual but doesn't really go anywhere unfortunately. They also seem to be keen on this 'hey here's a vocal sample used in rave/early house tracks' trick (as heard in No Good, Warriors Dance and Rhythm Bomb).

[Brundle-Fly]

Saw them at a festival, Leeds or Reading, they were pretty woeful and then they unleashed a Madness cover, it was desperately sad. All that noise and fury signifying nothing, etc.

Just listened to a bootleg of that, sounded a right laugh to me. They were never trying to be Crass or FEAR, they were always a commercial pop act with a load of attitude.

[BlodwynPig]

I'm a fire stopper, respected fire stopper.

[Custard]

I thought Invaders Must Die was a very decent return. It flows really well, that record, too. Nice flow, Liam!

The Day Is My Enemy left me cold, though. Really weak and uninspired compared to the previous stuff. The lead single, Nasty, is probably their all-time worst too, which certainly didn't help. I genuinely prefer the much hated Baby's Got A Temper

[Malcy]

I thought Invaders Must Die was a very decent return. It flows really well, that record, too. Nice flow, Liam!

The Day Is My Enemy left me cold, though. Really weak and uninspired compared to the previous stuff. The lead single, Nasty, is probably their all-time worst too, which certainly didn't help. I genuinely prefer the much hated Baby's Got A Temper

Is it much hated? Never heard anyone have anything bad to say about it. I think it's a great track. I have the DVD single (remember them?) of the video for it as well.

[Sebastian Cobb]

This "they just play a CD" accusation (when no live PA would now have an excuse to do that in the DAW age) is deliberately ignorant and flippant about how live audio is usually put together, and just feeds that shitty 'real music wot is a band' cynicism about electronic music. If you find them lazy and formulaic in their old age then at least be technologically accurate about saying so.

It seems especially unfitting for The Prodigy, being one of the few dance acts that would actually do a live PA in the early days (or roughly as much of a live PA as was technologically viable back then, with one musician and unsequenced hardware).

I haven't seen them live since the late 90s, but looking through random YT live videos it looks like they still bother to put on a bit of a show.

Anyway, yeah they've been musically treading water for ages, diminishing returns etc etc. There were still a few tracks worth bothering with on Invaders, less so on the last one (just fleeting sections that were rushy). I'm still always interested to hear what they do come out with though.

New song here, more of a headnodder than usual but doesn't really go anywhere unfortunately. They also seem to be keen on this 'hey here's a vocal sample used in rave/early house tracks' trick (as heard in No Good, Warriors Dance and Rhythm Bomb).

Yes, 'they just fire up ableton live, hit play and do a load of fist bumps behind their macbooks' would be more accurate.

[the]

What should they be doing? ie. Set-up, personnel - ?

[Paaaaul]

This "they just play a CD" accusation (when no live PA would now have an excuse to do that in the DAW age) is deliberately ignorant and flippant about how live audio is usually put together, and just feeds that shitty 'real music wot is a band' cynicism about electronic music. If you find them lazy and formulaic in their old age then at least be technologically accurate about saying so.

That might have been a fair criticism if I hadn't also mentioned two great live electronic bands in the post above yours. Underworld put on one of the best couple of shows I've ever seen.

[monkfromhavana]

This "they just play a CD" accusation (when no live PA would now have an excuse to do that in the DAW age) is deliberately ignorant and flippant about how live audio is usually put together, and just feeds that shitty 'real music wot is a band' cynicism about electronic music. If you find them lazy and formulaic in their old age then at least be technologically accurate about saying so.

It seems especially unfitting for The Prodigy, being one of the few dance acts that would actually do a live PA in the early days (or roughly as much of a live PA as was technologically viable back then, with one musician and unsequenced hardware).

I haven't seen them live since the late 90s, but looking through random YT live videos it looks like they still bother to put on a bit of a show.

Anyway, yeah they've been musically treading water for ages, diminishing returns etc etc. There were still a few tracks worth bothering with on Invaders, less so on the last one (just fleeting sections that were rushy). I'm still always interested to hear what they do come out with though.

New song here, more of a headnodder than usual but doesn't really go anywhere unfortunately. They also seem to be keen on this 'hey here's a vocal sample used in rave/early house tracks' trick (as heard in No Good, Warriors Dance and Rhythm Bomb).

God, that track is dull. It seems like there days it's the video first, then the music second.

As for dance acts playing live - of course it's not going to be possible for them to play everything live, and if they were to do so, it would probably be 4 people stood behind laptops.

Then again, I loved watching Shades of Rhythm BITD when that was a couple of people banging away at unplugged keyboards, so I know nowt.

[buzby]

It seems especially unfitting for The Prodigy, being one of the few dance acts that would actually do a live PA in the early days (or roughly as much of a live PA as was technologically viable back then, with one musician and unsequenced hardware).

Theiir  live shows were a mix of sequenced playback and hand-played - he used a pair of Roland W30 sample workstations (which were basically the S550 sampler and an MPC sequencer built into a keyboard) MIDI synced together, as seen in this 1991 video. Not long after that he moved to using a pair of Akai S1100s to store and playback the samples, sequenced from the W30s. The sequenced tracks were cut into 8 bar loops, the tracks were played live had the 2 or 4 bar loops that could be triggered manually on the W30.

The W30 was used in the studio too until The Fat Of The Land, when he started using Cubase for sequencing. Nowadays the sequencing is done with a pair of Macbooks running Ableton.

I saw them at Creamfields in 2006 and I ended up wandering off part way though to see what was going on in the tents. I mostly remember wishing Maxim and Keith would just shut up.

[the]

This "they just play a CD" accusation (when no live PA would now have an excuse to do that in the DAW age) is deliberately ignorant and flippant about how live audio is usually put together, and just feeds that shitty 'real music wot is a band' cynicism about electronic music. If you find them lazy and formulaic in their old age then at least be technologically accurate about saying so.

That might have been a fair criticism if I hadn't also mentioned two great live electronic bands in the post above yours. Underworld put on one of the best couple of shows I've ever seen.

You mentioning those bands doesn't affect the standing of anything I said, which was about lazy inaccurate criticism of the way things are done.

Theiir  live shows were a mix of sequenced playback and hand-played - he used a pair of Roland W30 sample workstations (which were basically the S550 sampler and an MPC sequencer built into a keyboard) MIDI synced together, as seen in this 1991 video.

That was pretty early on (even before the release of Charly), and those tracks were written entirely inside the W30, so were pretty portable in that respect.

Not long after that he moved to using a pair of Akai S1100s to store and playback the samples, sequenced from the W30s. The sequenced tracks were cut into 8 bar loops, the tracks were played live had the 2 or 4 bar loops that could be triggered manually on the W30.

Some tracks were cut up to be triggered live in this way, not all though.

When listening to old live shows, it's pretty obvious that the tracks which run pretty much according to the studio versions were actually coming off of DAT, with stuff being played on top of them (hence my comment about unsequenced hardware).