Album review: Prodigy, Fat of the Land

12:00 PM Saturday Dec 8, 2012

Album cover for The Fat Of The Land. Photo / Supplied

The latest in a run of influential 90s British albums to get a reissue, including most recently Massive Attack's Blue Lines, is Prodigy's 1997 chart-topping dance album. Although The Fat of the Land was not so much influential - because the Essex trio had already accomplished that with their 1992 debut, Experience, and follow up Music For the Jilted Generation - but more like a full-blown breakthrough. It remains one of the biggest selling dance music albums of all times, with more than 10 million copies sold, and was No. 1 in 24 countries (including here in New Zealand).

And 15 years on, big songs like Smack My Bitch Up, Breathe and Firestarter still have the power to turn you into a demented dancing freak. The dynamic and tension of Breathe, with its taut and creepy beats and the dual lyrical venom of Keith Flint and Maxim, is especially fiery, as is the techno punk of Fuel My Fire and the propulsive big beat of Funky Shit. For all the uppity and banging dance songs, the album also has the swaggering lope of tracks like Diesel Power, the more expansive and challenging electronica of Mindfields, and the smooth, stealthy nine-minute epic Narayan transports you back to the hedonistic days of 90s dance music.

This reissue also comes with six bonus remixes, the best of which is Zed's Dead's steely elastic take on Breathe.

The only letdown is the dance rock of Serial Thrilla, which sounds like it could lapse into nu metal at any minute, but otherwise The Fat of the Land really is the funky shit.

Stars: 4.5/5
Click here to buy Fat of the Land by Prodigy.

- TimeOut

By Scott Kara @scottkara

Echo (New Zealand) | 02:12PM Monday, 10 Dec 2012

In my view the real breakthrough album, artistically if not commercially, was Music for the Jilted Generation. They introduced all the energy and rhythm in the debut Experience album, but it was only when Jilted Generation came out that critics started to take them seriously. The album itself is high tempo dance as one would expect, but is almost like a prog-rock album from the 70s in its composition. It also remains one of the few dance albums that can be cited for having something of a political message behind it. By the time Fat of the Land came out, one gets the impression they were exhausted from it all (not surprisingly). But the Americans bought it, so it gets remembered.