Niki N. Phaser

We all know (or do we?) the story of The Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land album and how, because of it, the rave elders of the tribe ruled the world for about two years, before taking a long break. The three singles released from this album, Breathe, Firestarter and Smack My Bitch Up have all made history: the videos included in almost every countdown of controversial mv’s, the tracks covered and remixed by legions of dj’s, they haven’t missed from any live set of the band ever since. But an album does not achieve such success and notoriety on singles alone. Amongst non-single masterpieces like Funky Shit, Mindfields or Climbatize, we also encounter the first official collaboration between Liam Howlett and rapper Kool Keith of Ultramagnetic MCs fame. The hip-hop crew is one of Howlett’s favourite to sample, but this is the first time Kool was actually invited to do the vocals and the lyrics. Before being included on the album, the track used to be played live, known as Blow Ya Mind with Maxim doing some freestylin’ over the beat. The Kool version retained the chorus “Blows your mind drastically, fantastically” and most importantly, the sick d’n'b line, punctuated by a base hit that will test ya speakers and blow ya mind, all in one. It’s interesting that despite hip-hop being one of Howlett’s primal preferences, this is about the only Prodigy tune that would qualify in this genre. It is one of their most powerful tracks, displaying once again Howlett’s ability and pleasure of creating beats that no matter at what volume you play them, they still sound too loud for the neighbours.

LIVE PERFORMANCE OF Blow Ya Mind IN 1996

First of all, you should know that this is not your ordinary pop album, which has some upbeat songs, some ballads, opens with something up-tempo and ends with the longest song. This is not even your ordinary Moby album. There are no tracks here which will get played in Upper East Side hip clubs. No 1000 bpm. There are hardly any drums on it. This might as well be called Moby’s synth strings and pads album. There were signs of the coming of Wait for Me. Ambient instrumentals like the Intro from Hotel or My Weakness from Play would fit without any problems on this new collection. Wait for Me is also the kind of album which works really great if you listen to all of it. It’s a lot like a soundtrack, even the songs with voices.

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