Dundee’s Caird Hall isn’t exactly accustomed to welcoming acts like The Prodigy. Cast an eye over the upcoming events calendar and, beside tonight’s gig, you’ll find a massive knob (Jimmy Carr), a collection of quite literal massive knobs (The Chippendales) and then no knobs at all (Moscow Ballet’s ‘Swan Lake’).
Nearly two thousand pile through the doors in organised chaos. Many of the original ‘Jilted Generation’ are now smartly dressed thirty-somethings, hovering at the bar awaiting big-beat nostalgia. Ageing hardcores of the ‘Experience’ days stand next to excitable youths, lured by the 09′ success of ‘Invaders Must Die’ or perhaps the immortal staples of ‘Fat Of The Land’. Either way, Howlett’s crew have no demographic. They are all-encompassing, panoramic and electronic. Titans of their sound.
The matured trio appear, the crowd rumbles, and each assume their positions; a horn-haired Flint to the left, Maxim to the right and Howlett dead centre, manning an electronica nucleus of laptops, programming equipment and various Roland keyboards. The initial bass rumble of a more modern ‘World’s On Fire’ pulsates from the towering soundsystem. This tour will cement the new material, and more than half of tonight’s set will come from their 2009 LP.
Sandwiched between the set peaks of ‘Breathe’ and ‘Firestarter’; ‘Omen’ and ‘Warriors Dance’ stand strong and boom out from the crowd now committed to the sweat and pain of rave ructions. “Where’s my warriors?” bellows Maxim. But some have battled too far, and mid-gig chatter that a fan has fallen from the venue’s 20 foot balcony to a near-fatal landing seeps an air of anxiety into the hall. Scattered police adorned in luminous jackets begin to appear throughout the crowd, as many unaware (including the band) of the injured fan continue to wildly thrash and leap to the sounds of ‘Diesel Power’. Few even notice, such is the hypnotism of the stage. Mayhem has ensued and nobody cares. Scenes from the stage could not of seemed more ‘Prodigy’.
Not the type to draw out pre-encore absence, the crowd have barely began chanting before the trio return. ‘Out Of Space’ chimes out, the spring sound sample drops, and in a scene for surrealists, Caird Hall’s 2000 capacity proceed to murmur Max Romeo’s ‘Chase The Devil’ at a nonchalant reggae pace. Howlett leaves no gap between, and fills the air with the thunderous pump of drum samples and feeding melodies, which channel straight into ‘Their Law’. An apt denouement of attitude and energy. It’s more than a decade since original rave bowed its glowing face, yet they still stand. Talent lives over trend.
Words by Joe Zadeh
