Category: Music

Muse announced that the name of their next (fifth) studio album, expected to be released September this year, will be named “The Resistance.” The album will be “symphonic” and will have a “full collaboration with an orchestra.”

For me, Muse never managed to recreate the masterpiece that was “Origin Of Symmetry”, their second album that I’m more than willing to listen to anytime. That’s not to say that the following two albums were bad. I just got tired of them after a while. I’m hoping for the best with The Resistance.

Anyway, you know it’s a good year for me when each of my three favorite bands releases an album: The Prodigy in March, The Mars Volta in June and Muse in September.

Good times :)

Today it rained in the morning but we still went out to the city center to walk around. Then we came back to the hotel, rested and went to the second Prodigy show.

The show was even better than the first one we saw. The location was the bigger National Indoor Arena, which includes a seated balcony area (like in a basketball court.) Naturally no one was seated and anyway we had the better standing tickets on the floor. The crowd goes crazy during the entire show but obviously the well known tracks (Smack My Bitch Up, Omen, Out Of Space and many more) get a stronger reaction. The floor was trembling from the jumping of the crowd during quite a lot of the show. So amazing. And it ends with everyone singing the lyrics of Out Of Space.

Tomorrow Katz and I go our separate ways. She’s going north to Isle Of Man and I’m going south to Brighton for the next Prodigy show on Tuesday the 14th.

It was Katz’s birthday and a beautiful day. Katz wanted to row a boat and trying to find a place where we can do that we went straight to Cardiff Bay, which seemed like the obvious choice for that. Cardiff Bay is a very beautiful bay area so we stayed there for a while but there were no rowing boats there. Following instructions we went to Roath Lake where there are boats to row. Roath Lake is a very beautiful park area which has a pretty big lake with a lot of ducks, seagulls and swans. However, we experienced more disappointment when we learned they won’t be letting anyone row until Friday. So we just walked around the lake and went back to the hotel.

The Prodigy’s show is right across the street from our hotel (see pictures below) so we went to the Cardiff International Arena to take a look before even the doors were opened. Some kids were already camping outside the arena, The Prodigy’s tour bus (a Four Seasons bus, apparently) was outside parking and the sound check was in progress inside. We could hear the bass and the outside facing windows were vibrating. I got very excited just seeing that.

Later we went to the show. Let me just start by saying that whoever told me I’m crazy for getting tickets to four shows that are “the same” was very wrong. I’m sorry I didn’t get tickets to all 11 shows. It was crazy. Crazy and amazing. I had fun just dancing at first but when Liam (Howlett, the prodigy behind The Prodigy) dropped Poison I went berzerk. And I stayed that way for the entire show, more or less (I’m not so young anymore so I had to stop for breathing here and there.) Katz loved it as well and is now considering joining me for the next show in Birmingham on the 9th. One thing we learned is that while standing in the back gives you space, the sound is better a but forward. I’m definitely going to do that in the next shows.

If you’ve never been to a Prodigy show, you have no idea what you’re missing. Good night.

I asked one of the DJs during the Full Moon party to play Smack My Bitch Up. He signaled to me something I interpreted as “it’s on my list.” However, the only Prodigy track I heard him play is Out Of Space (Audio Bullys remix.) I’m pretty sure playing the original Out Of Space would have gotten better response from the party goers, but this is pretty good too. It was 2:30am so most of them are already completely wasted.