I was saddened by the news that Keith Flint, the iconic frontman of The Prodigy, had killed himself at the start of March.
Although Liam Howlett always did the production for the band, Flint (along with a few others, but mainly him) provided a lot of the celebrity appeal, with his crazy punk persona.
As Howlett explains, without the showmanship of Keith Flint, The Prodigy would never have become the global phenomenon that they did.
From the third album of the band, Flint also provided vocals on a lot of the songs. It’s his visceral and angry vocals on the classic “Firestarter”, for example.
His voice also features on “Breathe”, a paranoid and ominous voyage through breakbeat and electronica.
The plucking is particularly ominous, and the drums are distinctive, and are sampled from “Johnny the Fox Meets Jimmy the Weed” by Thin Lizzy.
The song was released in 1997, on the album Fat Of The Land. It was also released as a single in 1996. It was the group’s second consecutive number one on the U.K. Singles chart!