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Pirate Firestarters are back

• 17th October 2012
• Cameron Adams

GENE and Ace regularly hassle Liam Howlett about the overdue album by his band the Prodigy.

They're not impatient members of Kiss, although Gene Simmons did a version of the Prodigy's Firestarter.

"It's terrible," Howlett told Hit of the cover at the time.

Despite this, Kiss fan Howlett did call his son Ace, and his brother-in-law Liam Gallagher's son is named Gene.

"Gene keeps asking, 'Have you got any new music?'," Howlett says, noting it's nearly four years since the Prodigy's last release Invaders Must Die.

The kids are realising what the rest of the world has long known; the Prodigy work at their own speed.

There may be a new song out by the time the Prodigy are here for the Future Music Festival in March. Or not.

"We are coming with new material to play," Howlett says. "There's no point coming with the greatest hits show again. We've done that."

This time the Prodigy are staging their own festival within the Future Music Festival.

Their Warriors Dance Arena has run as a stand-alone festival in Tokyo, Serbia and London. It'll be shoehorned into a noisy tent at Future.

As well as the Prodigy playing live, they've curated a bill that includes Boys Noize, Feed Me, Zeds Dead, Kill the Noise, DJ Fresh and Zane Lowe.

"It's the Prodigy's party, you're coming in to celebrate with us," Howlett says. "And we can tell you for sure the sound in our tent will be the best sound in the festival - it'll be all about the bass."

They're also hoping to set up a tattoo stand for fans to get a permanent souvenir of the Prodigy's famous ant logo.

"One guy got the ant tattooed on his head," Howlett says. "Some people are crazy."

The Prodigy are working on a new album, with the working title How to Steal a Jetfighter. 

"You know what you're going to get with us," Howlett says. "It's always going to have the beats and the bass. We're pirates. We take what we like from the electronic music scene and make it our own.

"People think we've gone dubstep. We haven't. In England that music isn't happening so much anymore, it's like a phase. We stick to our guns."

Howlett wasn't amused by Muse trying out dubstep.

"I love Muse, but I like them as a rock band. When Korn did it with (dubstep act) Skrillex, even though it wasn't received very well it seemed they were ahead of the time. It was like Muse missed the boat a bit."

This year marks the 15th anniversary of the Prodigy's landmark album The Fat of the Land, home to their timeless anthems Breathe, Firestarter and Smack My Bitch Up.

"It seems a long time, but this job keeps me young," Howlett says. "When you're in a band it's like a time warp."

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• Liam Howlett
• Gigs