The Guardian recently interviewed The Prodigy about their new album The Day Is My Enemy, and their thoughts on the current dance music scene might come as a bit of a shock.
“I hate to be the guy that’s like, ‘It’s not like it used to be’, but there is a grain of truth in it,” [says] Keith Flint.
“Yeah, the dance scene has flatlined and we’re the spike,” [says Maxim].
“Dance music at the moment is so fucking dead” [says Liam]
For a group that galvanized dance music back in the ’90s and early ’00s, to make that statement seems a little contradictory. Though, I can’t really blame them for thinking the way they do. From my perspective, sitting a computer generally all day long, where my job is to discover new music, my view of dance music is bright and grand. But from their perspective, touring at festivals and producing music day in, day out, they have little time to really delve deep into what’s out there and are only able to see the crap that floats to the surface. 
“Everything’s so commercialised it shuts down the underground,” [Keith] continues. “If you’re on an independent record label now, not once do any of those pricks come up with an exciting idea. When we were on XL, they wanted to be dangerous and they wanted to be exciting because we were dangerous and exciting! But now no one’s there who wants to be dangerous. And that’s why people are getting force-fed commercial, generic records that are just safe, safe, safe.”
Certainly, there’s a lot of commercialization going on. In order to succeed in a big way, you generally have to follow the mold and play it safe to the general public. But The Prodigy are all about breaking molds.
“I don’t hear anyone out there that sounds like us,” boasts Keith. “They can try but it’s in the sonics, the whole carcass of the song. The way it attacks you is so well engineered. No one else can do that. They don’t have the ability to make that noise.”
It’s hard to say whether this album will significantly change dance music in any tangible way, as the band hopes, as it’s become an entity much larger than any single group to control. One thing is for sure though, this album will force people to look at how monotonous and cookie-cutter the top tier DJs have become, and hopefully open their eyes to some new ways of approaching dance music on a larger scale.
