Presenting ‘Need Some1’, the frankly pounding first single from The Prodigy’s forthcoming album. It is, if you like, vintage futurism, a banger that features a classic house diva vocal sample from Loleatta Holloway (the original “voice” of Black Box’s ‘Ride On Time’).
“I wanted to write something that had downtempo swagger, but still felt dangerous,” says the band’s Liam Howlett, introducing the single alongside an explosive video shot in Manila by Paco Raterta. “After being sent loads of pedestrian video director showreels,” says Liam, “Paco’s style stood out and punched me in the face: just so raw and original-looking, I knew he was the man for us. The finished video has such violent edge and style and looks like nothing else we have seen – to us it’s only worth doing a video if you can make something original and exciting, which this is.”
'Need Some1’ is the perfect opening salvo from The Prodigy’s newly-announced album ‘No Tourists’, which has been written, produced and mixed over the last year by main man Howlett in his studio in London’s Kings Cross. Though this is – Liam notes – “very much a band album”. Maxim and Keef Flint are very much present and correct, each supplying their legendary vocal skills on this, the Essex machine’s seventh studio record. Yes, there are one or two collaborators, but fundamentally this is the sound of the central Prodigy three, bringing their riotous sound to audiences old and new, two decades since they changed the face and sound of electronic music with epochal album ‘The Fat Of The Land’. For a band who’ve sold 30 million records and won multiple honours (two Brits, two Kerrang! awards, five MTV awards, two Grammy nominations), this is next-chapter and next-level Prodigy.