What Evil Lurks

• 25th February 1991, 12” XL-Recordings, XLT-17
• 22nd November 1991, 12”, 45 RPM, Torso Dance Records & XL-Recordings, TORSO 12194
• 27th September 2004, 12" XL-Recordings, XLXV 1501

The very first release ever!

The first demo Liam produced was an EP called What Evil Lurks in 1990. Liam originally offered this tune to Tam Tam Records. As Liam had previously been in Cut 2 Kill, who had signed a deal with Tam Tam, he decided to offer it to them. They refused. The first release by The Prodigy consists of 4 tracks from the 10 track demo he gave to XL. This included an early version of Everybody in The Place. It was a lot slower and much more empty than the final incarnation on Experience, showing us how many times Liam writes and rewrites a track before he's happy with it.

Using a single Roland W-30 Liam created most of the EP by simply assigning the various samples and drum loops to each of the W-30's channels, and mixed down to tape.

The title sample "What Evil Lurks in the hearts of men" is taken from the 40s radio series "The Shadow" and you can thrill to your very own "Come on y'all" The bleeping noises that you can heard on Android are actually the W30's internal voices.

No promotional copies of What Evil Lurks were released by XL-Recordings on either vinyl or CD. Only ten acetate white label 12 inches were pressed to promote this EP.

XL Recordings once let Android be issued to a Dutch dance music compilation Order to Dance III, which is the only official way to get the track on CD. None of the other three What Evil Lurks EP tracks are available on CD officially.

At the time Liam must have been a little fond of this song, as when asked to do an XL Recordings mix for a free cover cassette for DJ magazine, he played this as the only Prodigy track in a five tracks DJ mix of XL acts, sandwiched between The Flowmasters' Let It Take Control and Jonny L's Ansaphone.

After this EP came Charly and everyone knows the rest.

Beware for fakes!

There are some whitelabel fakes going round nowadays! The whitelabel looks exactly the same as the original item apart from a few small differences:
- plain black sleeve
- Android is typed Androids
- XL-logo is slighty different than original
- there isn't a name engraved into the vinyl like with the original one ("THE EXCHANGE")

'What Evil Lurks' EP was eventually re-released in 2004. Only difference is the catalogue number XLXV1501 (on the original release XLT-17). Tracklisting is the same. The sleeve itself is slightly different (15th anniversary sleeves). Some vinyls came with a black sticker on the front.