HELLO Liam, what are you up to today?
I'm in the studio, preparing for the tour coming up. There's a few of the tracks we've been playing over the summer that we think can be better just by moving certain things around, turning bits up and changing the arrangements.
The music in the set always evolves, because we're playing it every week. When we come off stage, we'll be talking about how some of the tracks can improve or maybe we don't want to do a certain track any more, we want to do another one instead.
That's what's so good about this tour coming up: first of all we're in Europe and then we finally get back to do some gigs in England and stuff. It's quite a rapid series of dates so it enables us to really tweak the set as we go along, which we love, rather than doing like one show per weekend like you do with the festivals.
The Day Is My Enemy is quite an aggressive, angry record, which makes for an energetic show. Is the new stuff like Nasty, Wild Frontier and Get Your Fight On fun to play live?
Yeah, the new s*** has gone down really well. There were certain tracks that we knew would go down really well, others we've tried a couple of times and maybe still need a bit work to get them engineered into the right place.
Like Rebel Radio, that one's not quite there yet – but something like Wall Of Death (the LP's blistering finale) went in there fresh out of the box, totally ready. It's like a short sharp punch in the face
It's the real fans who come to these gigs and they all know the new ones. That means we have a bit more freedom to kind of mess around with them, play slightly different versions and make things happen in different ways. We've got to keep it interesting for ourselves as well.
Have you been able to do Ibiza, your collaboration with Jason from Sleaford Mods?
We have done it a few times, but only with Jason when he's been available to join us on stage. At this stage he's out doing his own stuff so it will be tricky to sort out dates.
But he's a good lad, Jason, he told me to always give him a bell and that he'd come and do it if he was around.
That collaboration was just great fun all the way through, which is exactly like what you want them to be like – easy and exciting. We really got on and had a f***ing good laugh. We've become friends, which is nice.
At the time when I did Ibiza, it was really only to break away from the Prodigy album for a second and do something else, so I wasn't sure what was going to happen with it. But when it was finished I played it alongside three or four other songs for the record and it just sounded like it belonged.
The making of The Day Is My Enemy was a long, difficult process. What went wrong – and what went right?
Making this album was a pain in the arse. To be fair, when you start making a record it's quite terrifying – it's like going into a big black void, with no ideas. But at the same time it's quite exciting, because you just think, "Well, I can do anything".
This one started off fun: we set the studio up like a big recorder, where we could walk in, press record and just get going. It was more like live jamming and we got loads done in those first two months – about 80 per cent of Keith and Maxim's vocals were recorded straight away, which was a very different way of working for us.
So that was good. The frustrating bit was the middle part, which was just all of us fighting and getting fed up. But then the last three months, where I worked on my own at night, was the most enjoyable section of any album I've ever done.
I loved that part – I almost didn't want it to end. Staying awake at night and getting into that different headspace made it all worthwhile.
And without sounding like a hippy, the music did kind of glue our friendships back together. We'd been on this big journey together and come out the other end with something really good to show for it.
Then it was like, "Right – let's go and play this f***ing thing live".
Despite the end result, you've recently suggested that you might be done with the LP format altogether. Is that true and, if so, what's the future for Prodigy releases?
That's correct, we're going to focus on short EPs from now on. The album format as we know it is gradually dying. The way people consume music now, it's like fast food.
Also, it takes us too long to write, record and release a full album. We want to be able to write three or four tracks and go, "Bang – there you go". Out straight away, no f***ing about.
While we've got that coming out, we'll have the next one ready to go as well. So the whole thing will be more rapid fire, the music will get to people quicker and there'll be no more waiting around four or five years between albums.
We can't go through that again – it would kill us.
How did you manage to get Public Enemy as openers for the upcoming tour?
Basically, we were all thinking about the ultimate people we could ask to join us as special guests. When I said Public Enemy would be mine, our agent said, "Well, we'll ask them then".
I thought there was no way they'd do it – but three days later we had a 'yes'. I was like "Holy s***!" It's been really exciting and I've had a couple of emails back and forth from Chuck D which has been cool. So yeah man, it's happening!
Are you excited to be coming back to Belfast?
We're very excited. I remember we played Belfast very early on in the Prodigy's life, '91 or '92, huge gigs. The rave scene was big there, it was still really kicking off, and the people, man – they made the gigs.
You're just crazy there. So we can't wait to come back to Belfast again.
:: The Prodigy, with Public Enemy, December 1, SSE Arena, Belfast. Tickets from Ticketmaster outlets.
