1996 The Prodigy: Firestarter

The first time I heard 'Firestarter' I got a 'What the ffff.....????' moment that made me feel as old as my father. Admittedly, I'd flicked TV channels and dropped into a screening of the video somewhere in the middle, but caught cold and off guard I struggled to neatly box up an define the discordance I was hearing where the only constant point of reference was Keith Flint scowling the "I'm a firestarter, twisted firestarter" in the style of a man shouting his alibi to a gathering crowd as the police drag him backwards away from a burning building. Only in that video he wasn't in safe custody of the law, he was running around what looked like an abandoned sewer in the dark with the madness in his eyes far outgunning any sanity. All very worrying.

Yet taking the song as a whole from A -Z provides no less of a challenge to find a foothold on what it was all about - The Prodigy were a dance act right? Well there was a start, but this wasn't dance music as I knew it - it was nothing I could dance to anyway; my two left feet need a solid 4/4 backbone backbeat before they're confident enough to do anything, but the rhythm on this provides no safe harbour and instead sounds like a drum kit being thrown down the stairs. The engine gunning looped guitar riff sampled from The Breeders adds a rock edge, but that edge is a fine one - 'Firestarter' is by no stretch a boy's own rock song and any of its influences are there to embellish the song, not drive it.

In fact, trying to pigeon hole 'Firestarter' anywhere is always going to be a waste of time; there's too much going on here for that, so much so it puts me in mind of nothing less than the hybrid outcome of repeatedly sending any number of separate musical genres through Seth Brundle's telepods until they were irrevocably genetically spliced and re-spliced until a new mutation crawled out. What this new creation should be labelled I have no idea, but what it do know is that the violent adrenalin rush that rises off 'Firestarter's primal energy like steam makes me want to go out and steal a fast car then drive it into the sunset (or into a brick wall, it wouldn't matter) with my foot to the floor. This is officially 'more like it'. By God yes.