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After a little more than one month of preparations Nekosite finally got a major face lift! We got rid of the old fashioned html files and instead decided to run it on Wordpress. Publishing articles is much easier now and the whole platform offers us much more freedom and functionality (RSS, print this, etc…). Design wise the idea was to make it look like a magazine but with an attitude that is appropriate for Prodigy fansite. Very cut’n'paste!

It so much fun doing images like this and by the looks of it I’ll get to do more and more of them while news about new Prodigy album start rolling in. Keep yourself updated, visit nekosite.co.uk!

http://thegothamtimes.com/

It was a sunny day - very hot one - and I’ve just finished school and I was about to go to high school later that summer. Everyone I knew was enjoying what they were waiting for - summer holidays - but not me! I was too keen on what was about to happen that day - June 30th!

After months of speculating about the title of the album and more importantly the tracklisting, on then rather young internet, it was about to finally come out! I remember that the tracklist was supposedly to include tracks such as ‘Rock’N'Roll’, ‘Gabba’, ‘Lyrical Terrorist’ and ‘Blow Your Mind’ - the latter two later became known as ‘Serial Thrilla’ and ‘Diesel Power’. Days before the release kept getting longer and longer! But June 30th finally came and my dad drove me to the city to the music store. I grabbed the CD, payed for it and went back in the car where I ripped the plastic off the CD case. We didn’t have the CD player in the car yet back then, so the only thing left to me was to read the booklet - over and over again. I even remember smelling it couple of time!

I got home, put the CD in the player, turned it on to full volume, layed down in my bed and started listening to it. From the very first bar of the ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ I was gobsmacked. I remember guys from IRC - who got the album hours before me - were saying it was the new ‘Break & Enter’. They were only half right though, because the track had the biggest kick I ever heard before and after it!

The next track is ofcourse ‘Breathe’ which is the loudest track I have ever heard. It was about 8 months old when it appeared on ‘The Fat Of The Land’ but I only ever had it recorded on a cassette off the radio! Remember kids there were no mp3s and cd-r’s back then!!!

‘Diesel Power’ followed and the guy rapping on it had a familiar voice - of course it was Kool Keith that was sampled on couple of tracks on ‘Experience’ and back then the live favourite ‘Rock’N'Roll’. Still one of the best hip hop tracks ever.

Another familiar voice followed just after ‘Diesel Power’. I knew I heard that before somewhere and a quick peek in the booklet revealed that it was Beastie Boy’s sample I had on their ‘Ill Communication’ album I stole from my sister 2 years prior! ‘Funky Shit’ was kicking hard and I knew straight away it is gonna be a club classic for years to come.

A wierd noise rang out of my stereo before heavy guitars opened the next number which was ‘Serial Thrilla’. Based on a track called ‘Lyrical Terrorist’ that was available as a live recording on Toby Wood’s Prodigy Underground Archive as an mp2!

‘Mindfields’ aka ‘Minefields’ once considered as a single before ‘Breathe’ got picked out instead! Very catchy melody, hard beats, fat basslines and Maxim - If ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ was the new ‘Break And Enter’ then surely ‘Mindfields’ had to be the new ‘Poison’.

Next up was ‘Narayan” - a collaboration with Crispian Mills. Him chanting over Howlett beats gave me some serious goose bumps (I still get that sometimes)! Beats at the end were seriously rockin’ - they were later used as a base for the live version of ‘Narayan’ aka ‘Narayan Beats’.

Track number 8 on the album is of course ‘Firestarter’. Released as a single in March 96 it was back then a very novel track. It was the very first vocal performance by Keith - and what a performance it was.

Following ‘Firestarter’ is an instrumental track ‘Climbatize’ - but from what I know and what I remember it was suppose to feature vocals by certain Perry Farrell. He supposedly declined the collaboration because Prodigy couldn’t play his Lollapalooza festival. Doesn’t really matter too much since the instrumental sounds something that could come off their ‘Music For The Jilted Generation’ Narcotic Suite.

Album finishes off with an energetic cover of L7’s ‘Fuel My Fire’. Certainly not Prodigy’s brightest moment but better to end the album with this little number than to kick it off with!

Perhaps not the best album I ever bought but it certainly changed/influenced my life the most of them all. It continues to be a cult album (not only in dance genre but in music in general). Oh my god that’s the funky shit!

It was early December 2006 when some girls I know invited me to go see Justin in Vienna in June. Since I like both solo albums he did I was up for it. The day of the gig was coming closer and closer and I was getting a bit nervous since I am used to going to Rock’n'Roll concerts instead of Pop shows! One of the girl that was suppose to go with us got pregnant and couldn’t go with us - understandable!

The first thing bothering me was how early I had to get up to catch the bus that was taking us there! I only had like 2 hours of sleep and the weather was pretty bad - it was raining! Next thing that was bothering me was that I am too tall to travel in a bus. I had couple of beers on the bus while the other guys didn’t (weren’t allowed?!?!?!)!

Anyways the bus parked 200m away from the actual venue, which was Vienna Stadthalle. I got meself based in the nearest bar possible to the venue. The toilet was pretty packed tho, so me and Jana decided to go to a coffee bar which was 2 streets away!

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Everyone head off to detboi’s myspace! His’ remix of Uffie’s Hot chick is shit hot! He might be slightly naturaly deprived of height but he’s not deprived of hard funkeeee beats haha. 

Rock the beat.

I hit the 25 year mark last thursday. I got some funny presents but the funniest one was from Miri.

I myself got me a HP laptop which I don’t really need but I guess it is still gonna be loads of fun. Could be useful soon for recording demos, once I get a USB or FireWire soundcard.