Dirtchamber ②⑤ • Complete story!

The legendary Dirtchamber Sessions is a quarter of a century old: on 22 February 1999, the first officially released DJ mix by Liam Howlett hit UK shop shelves. In this article, we’ll look at how it differed from its predecessor, the Breezeblock radio mix that had been played on BBC Radio 1 six months earlier. Our team will tell the intricate story of its release on the label and reveal rare details about the design of the release, as told by the inimitable Alex Jenkins, former designer at XL Recordings.

The worn, rust-coloured cover bears the nail-scrawled inscription ‘Prodigy Present’, followed by the mixtape’s title in the same style – in the very late 1990s, the mere mention of the word ‘Prodigy’ on the cover of any music compilation could guarantee that it would sell out in record time.

After the release of 1997’s The Fat Of The Land, The Prodigy had a huge amount of credibility and it seemed that the band members could now take a break from almost six years of touring and finally do something they had been putting off for a long time. And it seems to have worked for the guys! Maxim began his own solo work and started preparing a full-length debut album, Leeroy too started to think about an independent career as an artist, Keith happily devoted himself to motorbike racing, and Liam, after the Reading Festival in August 1998, was finally able to take a break from endless tour and work on his own DJ mix, which he had been thinking about since the beginning of the year.

On 12 October 1998, as a guest of the incomparable Mary Ann Hobbs on her Breezeblock show on BBC Radio 1, Howlett unveiled the result of his work. In a 60-minute mixtape, Liam compiled his favourite tracks and demonstrated his amazing DJing skills, stitching together over fifty different tunes ranging from old-school hip-hop, funk and bigbeat to punk, rock and dub.

Check out the definitive story behind Liam Howlett’s Breezeblock Mix: theprodi.gy/breezeblock/

 Sorry, but this publication has been moved to the archive!

 Sorry, but this publication has been moved to the archive!

Mary Ann Hobbs:: When you put a mix together purely for radio, you have carte blanche, you can get away with blue murder, basically. But if you decide to turn it into a commercial release, then you run into all kinds of barricades. I mean, as regards kind of clearing the tracks and stuff. How many times have you actually had to re-edit this mix, Liam?.

Liam Howlett:: I had to re-edit this mix probably ten times. The original mix that was played on on Radio One had the Beatles, Hendrix, even some of the hip hop tracks that were in there kind of got turned down because I guess in the 80s they didn’t clear samples and stuff. And so you’re up against Backstreet Record Label in New York to sort of take on board the risk of getting sued by one of these big artists. Like, I don’t know, one example was Biz Markie, “Nobody beats the Biz” and he uses a Steve Miller, you know, “Fly Like An Eagle”, that track, it used a break from that and it’s still a lawsuit or something going on with that track. And it’s like already sort of more than ten years old or whatever. So we had to take that out, which was a shame because I really like that track.

For the most part, however, the copyright holders responded enthusiastically to Howlett’s mix. John Lydon (Johnny Rotten of the Sex Pistols), the KLF guys and apparently most of the original artists in the mix really liked his work. Incidentally, the Sex Pistols song New York was agreed with Rotten in the very last days of December!

Liam for Select: John (Lydon) turned it down initially and I couldn’t understand why, so I faxed him saying, “John, give us a bell, it’s Liam from the Prodigy – I want to use your record on a mix. ” He phoned me up the day before New Year’s Eve and said yeah. He said he was in a bad mood the day he turned it down

Liam for Martin James: The initial reaction from KLF was that they didn’t want me to use it. That came from Bill Drummond, which I thought was a bit strange considering I’m sure that KLF once said they were into what I do. I thought I’ve got to speak to Bill direct so I can hear direct from him “no, I think you’re shit and I don’t want to be on it”. I wouldn’t have a problem with it if he’d still said no but I don’t want some cunt in an office to tell me no. When I spoke to him, he was so cool you know. He was going “I think mix albums are shit”. And I was telling him how I feel the same, but for me it’s about trying to make something different. I’m taking such small amounts of the song that you have to listen to the mix as a whole. It’s not like a club mix thing. Once I explained what the tracks were he just said “those were records that first inspired me”. So he was cool with it.

 Sorry, but this publication has been moved to the archive!

Earlier this year, on 26th January 2024, the UK’s Jaguar Skills unexpectedly released a great cut-up mixtape called The Sword Fight – Liam Howlett himself took part in the work on it, and with his approval (as well as his approving intro/outro words) the record was streamed live on BBC Radio 6, just like 25 years ago. Immediately after the broadcast we covered this work in detail, and just a month later the official BBC website alone had several million listens, and when you add in all the third party pours from the fans, the result is staggering.

Our All Souvenirs team is not lagging behind either: once again, let us remind you that we are working on our own mixtape, which will consist mainly of unreleased tracks that we have re-created from scratch.

We hope that coming full circle after a quarter of a century will inspire Liam to new heights! And now it’s time to listen to the same Dirtchamber again. It’s just begun!

Headmaster: SPLIT
Additional thanks to: Sixshot, Alex Jenkins

YOOMONEY (RUS): 7928З82272З

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