On January 13, 2011, there’s going to be a big fight in Bangalore. A fight for parking space and a fight to get in first and get that T-shirt; After all, no EDM fan would want to miss catching The Prodigy, live. Yes, they’re coming, as part of the Eristoff Invasion. Band member Maxim tells us to be prepared. Excerpts from the interview…
You have quite a fan following in India — so are you putting together something special for us?
Let me just say, every show we do is special. Yeah, we’ll be playing everything. If we were playing in Germany, we’d update the set and play a lot of new tunes and so forth, tunes people haven’t heard before. But because it’s our first time in India, we will be playing music right from our first album all the way up to Invaders Must Die. So, it’s going to be 20 years of music, spanning all the way across, full of old tunes and new tunes.
How different is Invaders Must Die from the 1992 album — Experience?
The music is a lot slower. Back in the day, the tempo was 145-160 bpm and now, it’s a lot slower, around 130. I feel as if the music we’re writing now is a lot harder than what we were doing back in the day, with Experience. Even though what we were doing then was also completely original, we always feel like we’re evolving. As much as Invaders Must Die took influences from the 90s and brought them into this decade, we’re still always pushing the boundaries as far as music goes.
Do you have any favourite numbers from your own body of work? What are they?
Smack My Bitch Up is probably my favourite. Since we put it in the set around 1996-97, it’s the tune that always takes the crowd to another level.
Your music can easily ruffle the peace and quiet of a calm road; is there a specific philosophy you follow when you write music?
That’s exactly it — to make noise, to wake people up, to get people to pay attention. It’s not something where there’s music going on over there and people can ignore it and read a book. If it’s going on, you have to pay attention to what’s going on. It’s a lot like, look, we’re over here, this is what people are listening to and that’s what the music does.
If there’s anything going wrong with the EDM music, what is it? What would you like to see different?
I’m always positive about dance music. Dance music is people’s music. It’s something the people have taken back. Years ago, record labels had taken it off the people, but now, people have taken it back. They’re making music in their bedrooms, putting it on the Internet, on YouTube, so it’s self sufficient in some respect.
Got any message for your fans in India?
Yeah, make sure you come because it’s something that’s going to take your head off and you will never experience again in India. Until we come back…