The distortion came from a Thermionic Vulture.
100% analogue.
After reading Howlett's interview before AONO was released, I honestly had high hopes for the album, especially as it's been so long since Fat Of The Land. As the chap said in his
interview, "I realized that just because you shout more and louder on a record doesn't mean people feel you more, so I decided to take the beats back to the street." ...Which I thought, ah, nice one!, so it's not just going down the same direction as "Baby's Got a Temper", kinda thing. Given that, I thought the album might have a little less distortion-thrashing.
So when I got to hear it I was like, wtf?! Wtf have you done! I'm not at all fond of the new album. A lot of it actually is just fatiguing over-distortion and is literally yelling it down your eardrums, contrary to what Liam had implied in the interview, in a way.
There's "punchy", and then there's "blastin-yer-crappin'-ears-off-wi'-a-brickwall-o'-mush"... Always Outnumbered's biased towards the latter.
I quite liked Spitfire, actually that song rocks (especially when processed further with mastering stuff to make it sound even bigger! ), but the rest are pretty unmemorable, at least to me. If anyone other than Prodigy made it, I'd have binned it. Given their history for usually producing damn good music, I gave them the benefit of the doubt and played the album several times to get my head around it, and now it's grown on me as much as it will, I think. - Ie. Not a lot.
Must say I miss the Roland/Jupiter-type analogue strings and the chordal tunes like Climbatize, Skylined, Weather Experience, Narayan, etc., that cropped up at least once in each album, as that was a chilled Prodigy sound that I really, really liked. The 'melodic' stabs/phrases have disappeared, as has the acid 303s (no bad thing really, although Liam always did keep his acid stuff away from sounding like the clich?d commercial sound of trance in the later years. The 303-type phrases in Smack My Bitch Up sounded damn cool, and of course he pioneered it in Experience and MFTJiltedGen - probably unconsciously inspiring and spawning what was to become a future staple and fully raped groovebox concept), but it's probably cut off the original old-skool ravers that have followed Prodigy since the beginning.
The Poison-type tunes, that I reckon may have been the influences that were carried through into FOTL, have vanished, as have the 'clear'-but-still-punchy-as-f*k breakbeats that were so characteristic of The Prodigy. Though Howlett said "He was taking the beats back to the street", whatever that means, the drums still sound a little two-dimensional and flat, even on Spitfire. I liked his production on all the other albums - powerful but still clearly defined - to me AONO just sounds noisy as hell.
The voodoo is missing.
Where's it gone, Liam, man?!
And also, what the 'eck is Gallagher doing on there! I'd prefer the voodoo, any day..
IMHO.
My fav album is still M4TJiltedGeneration closely followed by FatOTL. Although those two swap with each other depending on what mood I'm in.
PS > However, in Prodigy's defence, it's certainly not mainstream, which is probably where they didn't want to be anyway, so I guess he's done good by taking the hardcore fans and his music back underground.
At the end of the day, Liam should make music how he wants, not what his fans want. So if he likes/loves it, then he needs to stick by that, and f*ck to everyone else. Hats off to him.