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Тема: 01.04.09 - интервью Кита Флинта для "The Skinny". (Просмотрено 1276 раз)
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01.04.09 - интервью Кита Флинта для "The Skinny".
# 02 апреля 2009, 01:02:25
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The Prodigy: Generation Terrorists
From underground ‘toy town techno’ pioneers to worldwide electro punk sensations, it seems The Prodigy are standing on the precipice of doing it all over again – Keith Flint tells Dave Kerr why the pop charts are still for suckers, even if they are at the top
“It was the frenetic, edgy, excitement of the early demos. It wasn’t about hit records or the potential to cross over...”
— Nick Halkes, XL Records
The Prodigy are an anomaly, a recurring tornado and an indelible mark on the face of British youth culture. Quite how the Essex trio has become a global phenomenon on their own terms – transcending ‘toy town techno’ to morph into the modern embodiment of punk - while engaging the youth with albums like their recent fifth, Invaders Must Die, beggars belief. But don’t call them a throwback; this has been the cycle for almost two decades. “I know, that seems impossible,” admits Keith Flint when reminded of the fact. But there’ll be no fireworks going off round his manor when the band rings in that landmark anniversary next year. ”I don’t celebrate anything and I don’t give a shit if I’m number one,” he shrugs, “I really only look to the next show. The funny thing is when you say 20 years. I remember people saying ‘oh, well, you might get a year out if it. Just enjoy it,.’ but I’m still living that year.”
He says that, but the sound of a fist knocking on wood betrays Flint’s gung ho mentality, and the new album is number one. Invaders Must Die is a work of primal brilliance, made marvellous by an abrasive sound that jars before seeping surely under the skin. However rather than going the way of the man with the polomint monocle in The Mighty Boosh, The Prodigy have fused elements of the past and the future to make a record that can stand tall alongside their most daring. But the road back to the top wasn’t exactly gravy…
The last LP, Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned was relatively overlooked, but the first three Prodigy records each defined three very different eras in their own way. This could be a dangerous question to ask at this point, but do you think album number five can carry the same weight?
"When you’ve written tracks like Firestarter, albums as big as Fat of the Land and even Jilted Generation – I mean, people just weren’t expecting those, they came from nowhere - I think this one’s going to shake people up. I think it’s going to show that a band can be around for a long time but still cater to a contemporary crowd as much as the people that were into it in the first place. But that’s not on my agenda when I’m in the studio. The only thing that’s on my agenda is: ‘Does this suck? Am I excited about taking this on stage?”
With foreign policy being what it is, the title of the new record could be misconstrued as something far more xenophobic than I’m sure it’s intended to be. But in paranoid times, it’s almost commendably un-PC. Does it take on any particular meaning in your own head?
“For me, personally, when the band went through a bad time and it was on its arse a bit, you realise that when something’s successful no one does anything to pick things up and give it an energy. Me and Liam went through bad times and people would take time to say ‘oh, you know that Keith’s working with this person’, or ‘you know that Liam’s in the studio working with these guys today’ rather than invite us both out for a meal and get us chatting. And this is friends, people very close to the band. All those people - and maybe even some of the paranoia bred in that environment – that’s what the invaders are. It’s people getting up in your shit that just shouldn’t be there.”
Presumably you’re talking about the period between Fat of the Land and Always Outnumbered? Did outside forces complicate relationships within the band?
“Yeah, exactly. And when people talk release date to release date, it’s a massive amount of time, but of course we toured a lot. I don’t know the exact time but there was a year, year and a half where we didn’t talk…it wasn’t a great time to be quite honest.”
I remember reading some years ago that Liam was struggling with writer’s block after knocking one out of the park with Fat of the Land, is that the same period you’re referring to?
“That’s it. We knew that from going into the studio and hearing something fresh every day to suddenly hearing nothing, it was writer’s block. I think it was a bit of complacency; everything was going really well and somehow it all culminated into one big pressure cooker. As time went on we wondered whether we were writing Fat of the Land 2. And that’s not something any of us wanted to do. Coming straight out of such a big album to try and write something fresh... it was really hard. You can run so far away from something in an attempt to not replicate it, but then you might run so far away that you’re in no man’s land. That period wasn’t a great time for us but I really believe that coming out of so much shit has made us put the effort into writing a great album.”
When did this record begin to take shape?
“Knowing what it was like to be on the inside of something so intense and so pressured, we just decided: right, we’ve got this studio, we’ll go in there and keep it pressure free. If we’ve got an idea, let’s not talk it through and go ‘is it really us, should we be doing that?’ We get it down, put it to one side and move on with something else. The mic was always set up so you could put down an idea instead of trying to sing it into Liam’s ear over the top of a loop. A lot of those vocal ideas made it to the album, but everything became a part of the library as we moved on.”
“The first sessions were free and easy but then it became too free and easy and too much of a party studio to be quite honest (laughs). As much as it was nice to have people coming in and not be such a closed shop – like the Prodigy is – we suddenly realised the elements that worked best together were the three elements of the band. Get that right and everything else will follow. You can spend as much time explaining to other people why you didn’t do that in the traditional way, why you didn’t write about social issues, or why you didn’t need big key changes, but we know that as second nature.”
This still very much feels like a party album with a conscience though. You’re not ramming any issues down anyone’s throat, sure, but Invaders has a beating heart…
“It’s not disposable, you’re absolutely right. It does have heart, and I think that’s the beauty of The Prodigy’s music and its vibe; that somehow it does mean something and it is real. When you see it live, you know it’s certainly not some try-hard manufactured bullshit. It’s hard to put your finger on; it’s a sum of all three parts. It’s not a prog rock album – fuck, nor will it ever be – but it’s certainly got a journey to it as well.”
We won’t dwell on this, but much was made of yours and Maxim’s absence from the last record. That's all history here though, do you feel your influence on this album?
"I certainly was involved with the album throughout in the respect that I was in the studio every day that I could be, bar headspace breaks et cetera. I remember saying to Liam: ‘Listen, man, we own the sound, however far back we go in our history. We don’t have to ask for permission to use it. That’s essentially what we’re about. So when we put together Warrior’s Dance, I said to Liam: ‘Forget the album, forget what it should be and don’t worry about that, let’s just write this track to take live.' And that’s what we did; we know what the live environment should offer and that’s what we wrote for. I think that was quite a springboard. Then again, it wasn’t about producing a revival album, or just a retro album. Without a doubt, it had to sound contemporary.”
That must be a little easier when you have groups like Justice, who borrow some of their menace from the Prodigy’s palette I think.
“Maybe so; I mean Liam’s a massive fan of Justice but I’m not. I even said to Liam the other day: ‘Fuckin’ hell, do I just not move forward?’ I mean, Run with the Wolves, Take Me to the Hospital - those tracks are still very much what I’m about; full on, abrasive. When it comes to the band we all carry an attitude and it’s not like anyone’s mellowed out by far. But they’re my kind of tracks: that’s what I like. Hopefully people get inspired by the band, but I would never be down with a direct copy of the Prodigy, because it’s just, well: Why? What a waste of their time. But it’s nice when new bands check you and say that you’re an influence, that’s massive respect.”
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Antar
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I think there are a few bands who use that influence tastefully now, but then it’s fair to say there was a glut of bands around ten years ago – and even further back, from Smart E’s to Audiobullys - who were more unashamed copyists of the sound and the attitude.
“Yeah, it’s definitely more tasteful now. But do you know what it was back then? I think people saw us come out of the rave scene and thought ‘look, see how fucking easy it is – you just write a couple of rave tracks and jump out there’. They really didn’t realise that the band has a lot more to it than that.”
Festival season is approaching and The Prodigy has certainly done its time on the circuit. By fitting into bills that otherwise share nothing in common, you’ve become a fairly amorphous fixture...
“I know, it’s brilliant!”
But with the new record going back to a more dance-oriented groove, can you see a difference in the way you’ll play, say, Download compared with RockNess this summer?
“You may add Their Law and take out Out of Space, for instance. You may do that, but very rarely. Usually, throughout the year we get a set that’s working absolutely perfectly and it just becomes clockwork. We find that we can take that from one environment to the other, and we certainly don’t pander to each environment to fit in, so to speak, and I know you’re not saying that. I think we’re very confident in the fact that we can turn up as The Prodigy and be The Prodigy at ease with those two festivals.”
No doubt you've played hundreds. What's the most memorable festival you've been to, whether as a punter or a performer?
“Now that is very hard. I love doing the Big Day Out over in Australia because it’s at the right time of year and you just feel smart for getting away from the winter. We’ve done it four times now, often getting the chance to see a great set of bands play the festival as well as their own satellite shows during the days off in each city as we went along. One day you'd see Rage Against the Machine in a great festival environment and the next at a smaller solo show with only a thousand people. I did the same with Soundgarden, Jane’s Addiction, System of a Down…all of those bands. I was so lucky to see them in an intimate environment. Fucking brilliant.”
Back here in the UK, how do you feel the club tour went last December? I'm thinking particularly of the Glasgow gig; you debuted a lot of brand new material, which is always daring...
“For a start it was fucking super hot, I tell you. And I loved it. Gigs like that remind you of why you do it – I need no second invite to walk onstage and perform with the band. That’s just what I love, and they’re going to have to drag me off there one day, I’m afraid. Someone’s going to say ‘listen, man, you’re too old’ and I’m going to be like ‘no way!’ But, if I’m being honest, there’d be nothing sadder than getting up there and feeling like you’d been punched out in the first round.”
You departed from XL to set up your own imprint, Take Me to the Hospital, on Cooking Vinyl last year – why?
”It’s to gain as much freedom as we can have. With all due respect to XL - they were very much about the artists and that’s what this band’s about – but we’d never be dictated to and we have to be a part of every process of this band all the way. I think it’s just another level of self-control, the majors will suck you dry and don’t really get the best out of a band because they think it should all be done their way.”
Does the label exclusively exist as a mechanism to put out Prodigy records, or do you expect it to house other acts, given time?
“It’s romantic to think that we’re going to find some really cool kids and maybe put them out and I believe Liam has certainly got the A&R skills to do that, but I think that we’re concentrating on this album so heavily that we won’t have the space for that at the moment. But if something comes along that we really believe in and really want out there - then, yeah - we do have the mechanism to do that. But it’ll only be done if it’s done properly and it doesn’t hamper the band.”
Which album gives you the greatest buzz to listen back to?
”I’ve always liked Always Outnumbered, I love it. I laugh to myself that it was overlooked to a great extent. I think to myself that maybe kids at the moment - who aren’t caught up in the politics of me and Maxim not being on the album, how long it took and all the things that surrounded that album - if they plug into the Prodigy today, maybe listening to Omen on TV, and they go on to iTunes and see Always Outnumbered, I think they’d get it.”
With all you’ve endured and celebrated as a band, what has been the Prodigy’s finest hour?
“This album, because it’s the most recent thing that’s happening, that’s why. When we did the Their Law retrospective album and looked back at the things we’d done and places we’d gone - the countries we’d played that had never had bands like us – they’re some great achievements. But to be quite honest, I think Invaders is our finest work. Shit, I sound like fucking Pink Floyd!”
Written by: Dave Kerr
Published: Wed 01 Apr 2009
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dikay
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доброй ночи, Antar
сумничал? 
печаль, но мне хочется читать и понимать на русском, можно? ) как?
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Antar
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доброй ночи, Antar
сумничал?
печаль, но мне хочется читать и понимать на русском, можно? ) как?
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Да переведу я, переведу!  Только нужно время. |
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Igor X
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Может все таки кто-нибудь займется переводом? мне лично интересно почитать,а то я смотрю все уже забыли про это интервью
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Лиса
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Довольно интересное интервью, но опять же, ничего нового
Киф рассказывает почему они ушли с XL - улыбнуло Какие-то Лямовские поговорки (которые нереальн0 перевести в некоторых местах)
Флинт любит Always Outnumbered ...
"Я думаю что Invaders Must Die является нашей прекрасной работой. Говно, Я звучу подобно fucking Pink Floyd!" 
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