“The Prodigy’s music is meant to be played loud. That’s really it,” says the band’s creator, Liam Howlett and adds, “We need the sound to be loud, the music to be loud and for the crowd to just be open to us.” One shouldn’t imagine that would be a problem. The British three-piece (completed by Keith Flint and Maxim Reality) is mere days away from its first ever performances in India and if the Internet buzz is anything to go by, it’s fair to say that the tremors have more than begun. The actual quakes (to carry this metaphor forward) are scheduled to occur on January 13 and 15 as part of Eristoff Invasion, with Bengaluru and New Delhi playing the roles as the respective epicentres. And according to the architects of this seismic activity, it’ll be the crowd that makes or breaks this maiden voyage to India. “We’ve played lots of gigs where people don’t understand us and they don’t understand what we’re doing, but then two or three songs in, they will understand or we scare them to get into it,” says Liam, discussing the key to a perfect performance and adds, “The only elements really are the sound and a lively crowd and then it (the performance) works.”
Since the release of The Prodigy’s massively successful fifth album Invaders Must Die in February 2009, the band has toured Europe, North America, South America, Australia and the Far East. Clearly, a tour to India is long overdue. “It’s a place we’ve always wanted to visit, you know? The excitement comes from the fact that you don’t know what to head with. You’ve just got to take on the challenge. We’ve got no preconception of what it’s going to be like; we can only imagine what it’s like. It’s always exciting for a band to come and play at a new place,” says Liam cheerily. Legendary leg-spinner and (equally legendary) SMS-sender Shane Warne’s insistence on bringing cans of baked beans and spaghetti on visits to India is now an established part of tourism lore in this part of the world. But what preparations have Liam and the boys made ahead of their tour? “We’re prepared musically. We think we know what we’re doing. We think we know what tracks we’re playing, but we want to be spontaneous with it all. That’s the thing about the band. None of it is choreographed or planned. In the middle of our gig, we might suddenly decide that we want to play another song and then do that instead. That’s the way we like to work and that’s the way it’s always been,” asserts Liam and adds with a laugh, “Apart from that, the only preparation I’ve had is some jabs in my arm (vaccines) and that sort of thing.”
While The Prodigy has never been the most prolific of bands when it comes to putting out new albums, each album has sounded hugely (if not completely) different from the ones that came before it. Now, nearly two years since Invaders..., Liam is all set to get cracking on album number six.
“To be honest, we’ve just started thinking about it and just started putting down a couple of ideas,” says Liam a few minutes before heading off to the studio to put down some more ideas. “We’ll get a couple of ideas down before we come to India. But as it stands, it’s just brainstorming at the moment. We just try to get as many ideas down as we can in as quick a time as possible and in a month or so, listen to what we’ve got. If there’s one idea that really stands out, we keep working on that,” elaborates Liam as he divulges his secret to success, saying, “It’s really important to be quick with writing music and not think about it too much. Just get it down.”
This sort of mindset has over the years greatly contributed to turning the band into a chimera of sorts, making it nigh on impossible to pigeonhole the band in one genre. And now, in 2011, plenty of others seem to be taking The Prodigy’s cue, pushing the concept of musical genres closer to obsolescence. “People are not thinking about what type of music they’re writing. They don’t seem to have any boundaries any more. There are a lot of electronic artistes that are experimenting with guitars. People have dropped their inhibitions and are just trying anything. Ten years ago, people would stay within their little box, you know? If you were a guitar band, you’d never have a keyboard on stage. That’s the best thing about music today,” says Liam, brandishing a double-edged sword, because in that, he also sees one of the worst things about music today. He explains, “I think the worst thing is that there are all these exciting things happening around the world, but these big bands take up all the airtime on radio and television. Also, you have to battle against Simon Cowell and all this nonsense. The trouble is these are just money-making factories that roll over all the good bands. You don’t get to hear a part of the good music that’s made because of ‘the machine’. We’d all be better off without it.”

To catch The Prodigy live, check out Eristoff Invasion’s full lineup or book tickets, visit www.invasionfestival.in