The Fat of the Land

Submitted by Glyn Lewis on 16 February 2013 - 10:03pm

Cover:

Artist:

The Prodigy

album-ID:

a_45

Nationality:

Year:

1 997

Release-year:

0000

Num-of-tracks:

Track-listing:

Smack My Bitch Up*Breathe*Diesel Power*Funky Shit*Serial Thrilla*Mindfields*Narayan*Firestarter*Climbatize*Fuel My Fire

Length-in-mins:

Nominator:

Bean

meeting-ID:

m_18

Now-num:

Spotify-URL:

4FHd783Gm1k8Fj2JWS34eb

Grooveshark-URL:

The+Fat+Of+The+Land/115875

Short-title:

fatOfLand

nominator-ID:

u_1

Meeting-date:

Monday, 23 February 2009

MusicBrainz-URL:

ac9138ce-6331-3f8d-86d7-69f13e4ab4f4

Wikipedia-URL:

The_Fat_of_the_Land

Spotify-link-type:

album

Discogs-URL:

Prodigy-The-Fat-Of-The-Land/master/12165

Allmusic-URL:

the-fat-of-the-land-mw0000054699

BBC-URL:

fzvr

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guest-list data

108

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reviewers-IDs data

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85

reviewed by

Glyn Lewis

Blows your mind drastically, fantastically

1-3-7-8

10

Arguably this album marked the high point and perhaps even the end point of a golden era of great UK dance based acts. From the mid 80s for a decade or so, it seemed to me, much of the interesting and innovative ideas in British music came from the dance arena and this album is one of the top examples.

Mr Prodigy plays his studio like a musical instrument. There's a really tight, exact sound on this, he seems to know and use all the devices that work in dance and punk anthems, he's got all sorts of familiar elements in place; samples of sirens, middle eastern singing, scratches, punchy synth sounds, sloganised singing with shock tactic themes; driving repetition that is relentless, pummeling you into submission; beats dropping in and out, textures coming in over fast sequenced patterns. You wouldn't say it's necessarily developing musically that much but things are always happening. He's also repeating sounds and treatments to help tie the album together as a whole.

All these ideas are perhaps not terribly original in themselves but the blend is extraordinary and unsurpassed – a perfect mix of aggressive dance, a totally convincing and seamless punk / funk fusion, where previous attempts in that style had often ended up being a little embarrassing.

For me this is an all time classic, mate. And although The Prodigy and their peers continue to produce albums, the law of diminishing returns seemed to be in effect from this point on (cue misty eyed nostalgia). Dance music does not get tougher than this.
85

reviewed by

Martin Lewis

Great, powerful album. Seminal work.

3-7-9

4-8

I normally listen to more mellow albums than this in the car and it took a while to get used to the 'wall of sound' that assails you on the first few tracks. Still I got used to it after a while and by listen 5 it had really, really grown on me. A work of great diversity and imagination. Powerful and earthy. Brilliant. Favourite is Climatize and second half of Smack my... with the Middle Eastern wailing.
82

reviewed by

Richard Norbury

An iconic 90's poptastic album.
72

reviewed by

Neil Hornsey

Smack my ears up

These songs get blasted into my ears wherever I am in the world, demonstrating their popularity. Despite this, they never get boring. Strangely, this is something I never think of playing, but probably because you hear it so much elsewhere. Can't deny it's a pretty remarkable album, there's some super use of synths which has lead the way in several genres of modern dance music.