The Independent

All our yesterdays and tomorrows, today (The Prodigy, Somerset House, London)

• 14th August 2005
• Simon Price

Once upon a future, all music was going to sound like this. In fact - despite their arguable influence on the rock-dance fusions of Daft Punk, Bodyrockers, Apollo 440 and Rinocerose - nobody else sounded like The Prodigy, and that future remained unrequited.

Tonight's show, then, evokes a peculiar feeling of nostalgia for a "now" which might have been. If any band had the firepower to deliver the mother of all shock-and-awe shows, it's The Prodigy. But they fail to use it. For example, there's only a teasing snatch of "No Good" and too often the momentum is allowed to sag between songs. The more that Maxim, a highwayman stripe painted across his eyes, yells "I wanna see you dance!", the more I wish The Prodigy would give us no choice in the matter.

Keith Flint is present and devilishly correct. As he runs hyperactively back and forth like a bear in a bad zoo, it's evident that as a live - and, ultimately, a commercial - entity, The Prodigy would be the poorer without him.

They still have their moments. And, to be frank, they're old moments. As they finally deliver a belated knockout blow with an encore of "Poison", "Smack My Bitch Up" and "Out Of Space", the retro-futurist nostalgia becomes overwhelming: I remember tomorrow.

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• Review
• Gigs