3. The ProdigyEverybody In The Place
I was in England when I bought ‘Everybody In The Place’, at Tower Records in London. Although it’s been one of my favourite styles of music for a long time now, when I discovered The Prodigy, I didn’t know about breakbeat hardcore or the scene they were attached to at that time. It just sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, and it was so exciting. Some of my all-time favourite music is when they were still in the rave scene. I know a lot more about breakbeat hardcore, and I’m a collector of it, but in terms of the sound, the sound quality, the melodies, the production and the ahead of their time-ness, I really feel that stuff stands heads and shoulders above most of it.
I’ve always been into learning synthesiser melodies. The things that people come up with on sequencers are nothing like the things people come up with on keyboards or guitars or anything like that. That’s been a big part of the development of my musicality over the years: knowing how to play things on guitar. I remember Aaron Funk saying that he saw me sitting there, playing along with Prodigy tracks on guitar, and he was like, ‘People always insult this kind of electronic music for being simple, but when you see someone playing it on guitar, it’s not simple at all.’ He was right. I learned all the songs from Experience and their first 12”s on guitar and it’s one of the most challenging things I’ve done.
