always outnumbered

Having mentioned the art of music reviews the other day, I thought I'd post a link to the review of the new album by the Prodigy which appeared in the Observer last week, not because I'm interested in the prodge at all but because I remember thinking when I read it last week 'that's what a record review should read like'. Not that it's especially well-written but just in that it actually goes some way to describing what it sounds like, low snares, hairy caterpillar bass lines and all. I won't reproduce it all here, but it's worth a look.

"Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, for all its laptop use and Howlett's decades of programming nous, feels very retro, using samples in their naked form and abandoning the studio-based, 12-bar song structure he broke with 'Firestarter'. It is anti-dance in some ways while being trammelled by the same reliance on programming as the rest of the genre, but also anti-pop and anti-pretty much everything else. It's the most elaborate invitation to sod off you'll hear for some time."

Read the whole review here.