Maxim • Scheming • 25 years

Originally set for release in August 2000, Maxim’s single Scheming finally came out on 11 September, becoming a highlight of his debut solo album Hell’s Kitchen. The finished cut featured production from Liam Howlett and guitar work from long-time The Prodigy associate Jim Davies, but before reaching that point the track went through several iterations — including an early version with Gang Starr’s Guru. To mark the tune’s 25th anniversary, we look back at its evolution, different versions, and the creation of its sleeve artwork.

Briggy Smale: Have you got anything coming up for the rest of the year or are you concentrating mainly on the album?

Maxim: The album’s done. The second single will come in August and will be called ‘Scheming’ featuring my cousin [Trina Allen], and then the album in September. It’s going to be hard, it’s going to be strong. Anybody with sense will pick it up and get a good stereo fitted – you can’t play it on a tin pan stereo.

Right after the single’s release, the press split into two camps: some accused Maxim — and Liam Howlett, who had worked on the tune’s beat and bass — of leaning too far into pop, while others praised the song for its innovative sound. It was the year 2000, and UK garage, which only yesterday was still rooted in the underground, was now breaking confidently into the mainstream charts. At the same time, it hadn’t yet lost its spark — still a fashionable style, but one that remained vibrant, fresh and strikingly different.

NME’s Stevie Chick: When your day job involves being the scary-eyed MC for The Prodigy, people generally don’t expect you to be building post-Missy R&B in your spare time. But Maxim Reality is just such a man, and ‘Scheming’, second single off his forthcoming ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, is just such a track, an inescapably addictive blend of junglist beats and technoid basslines, with vocalist Trina Allen spitting acid, fighting-claws out, and generally behaving in a fierce enough manner to suggest ‘Scheming’ could easily take ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ in a fight. One to send to Ad-Rock, then.

What few people realise is that the track was never meant to be a slick broken beat/UK garage cut in the first place. It began life as a slow, old-school hip-hop burner — something that might have sat comfortably alongside ‘Spectral Wars’ or ‘Universal Scientist’ from the album. The backstory of ‘Scheming’ stretches back to the late ’90s and involves none other than Guru of Gang Starr.

Maxim for MTV Essential (mid-1998): There’s gonna be a few collaborations on [the album]. I’ll give you one which I’ve done and that’s […] Guru from Gang Starr. There’s gonna be a couple more hip-hop artists on there.

In a 1998 MTV Essential, Maxim casually revealed he was working on a collaboration with Guru for his upcoming solo record. While ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ eventually landed in 2000 without Guru in the credits, the story didn’t end there.

As documented by numerous sources Guru did in fact record vocals for the track that became ‘Scheming’: early versions revolved around a slow, classic hip-hop beat. Maxim recorded this version while The Prodigy were touring in the US in the summer of 1998 and Guru delivered several verses before the track spent months brewing in the studio.

Interestingly, BMI music license database confirms that there are actually two different registrations of ‘Scheming’. Alongside the final version, the first entry — credited to Maxim (under his real name Keith Palmer) and Oliver Jacobs (aka Ollie J) — represents the early instrumental demo, created before Liam Howlett got involved. It was most likely this mix that was originally presented to Guru as an instrumental.

BMI Repertoire

 

Maxim for Kerrang: I played my stuff to Liam, purely to get his opinion. He seemed to really like it and he said that my style of writing has really come on a lot, which was cool.

According to Nekozine, news that Liam Howlett would be involved in the production of Maxim’s forthcoming album was already circulating by the end of May 2000. His role proved pivotal: after hearing the early version of ‘Scheming’, he rebuilt the track into something closer to UK garage. Guru’s verse initially survived this transformation and was included on at least three original masters of ‘Hell’s Kitchen’, but it never made the final album because Guru himself wasn’t happy with how his lines fitted the reworked mix. After some consideration of bringing in a new vocalist, the team decided the track sounded strong enough with Trina’s voice at the forefront. The finished track became one of the most mainstream-leaning moments on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’.

DJ Mag (September 2000): ‘Scheming’ seems to have a bit of a two step feel…

Maxim (September 2000): So people tell me. It was never meant to have, I don’t really listen to that music, but those beats have been going on since 1990 anyway, it’s just now that people have started putting decent singers on top of them. What’s great about that scene, though, and British music in general is the way we can mash things up and bring different styles together. It’s like that Wookie track ‘Battle’, a record like that just wouldn’t get made anywhere else.

Guru sadly passed away in 2010, and while a posthumous collection of his demos has since surfaced, the original hip-hop-driven version of ‘Scheming’ remains locked away in the vaults.

In the hidden section of our website, however, you can hear a short excerpt of the Guru verse over the remix

Years later, Maxim revisited the subject in a 2014 interview with OK-Tho. Asked about the supposed Guru feature, he revealed: ‘It never made the album because it wasn’t strong enough. It’s still in the studio archive. Guru passed away a few years ago and it was an honor to work with him. He is still one of my all-time favourite MCs.’

DJ Mag (September 2000): Liam helped with production on ‘Scheming’, have the band generally been supportive of what you’re doing?

Maxim (September 2000): Yeah. There’s no conflict between what I’m doing and the Prodigy, because the two things are so far removed. I could never write a track like Liam anyway and I don’t want to, I want to develop my own sound.

When it comes to the building blocks of the track, the sample base is surprisingly elusive. Despite Maxim and Liam’s well-known love of digging through libraries, in 25 years only one sound has ever been clearly traced: an FX hit from Zero-G’s legendary Datafile 3, released in 1992.

Few people realise that guitarist Jim Davies — a long-time associate of The Prodigy since 1995 — recorded the tremolo part for ‘Scheming’, the defining hook heard right from the start. For the record, Jim also played on the track ‘Prism’, which eventually appeared on the ‘Scheming’ single as a B-side. All Souvenirs was lucky to get a few comments from him personally.

Jim Davies for All Souvenirs: I recorded that track with Maxim quite a while before its release in 2000. It might have been around the time I was doing guitars for The Prodigy for the late 1990s maybe? Even though I wasn’t playing live with the band at that point I was still doing guitars for Liam and also for Maxim and Leeroy’s projects.

Jim recalls that he was heavily involved with Maxim’s music around that period. ‘I actually found a tape in my loft recently which had a load of demos of tunes I was doing with him around that time,’ he shares. Over the years he ended up playing on quite a few of Maxim’s released tracks.

Jim Davies for All Souvenirs: As far as I remember, I did my guitar parts for ’Scheming’ at Maxim studio using the same guitar effects unit I was using for everything at the time. I used quite a weird tremolo guitar sound throughout the track which became the main hook.

When asked whether he had heard the original hip-hop version and at what stage he joined the project, Jim’s answer was understandably vague — after all, a quarter of a century has passed and many of the details have simply faded from memory.

Jim Davies for All Souvenirs: I ‘think’ I was involved in the track from the very start, as the guitar is really the main hook — I don’t remember any other versions… It’s quite possible that I played on the original hip-hop version which Liam later worked on, I just can’t say for sure!

Trina Allen, whose voice gave ‘Scheming’ so much of its fire, sadly passed away some years after the recording.

Stop-motion ‘Scheming’ music video was filmed sometime between July and August 2000 and directed by Barnaby & Scott — the duo of Barnaby Roper and Scott Lyon, known for iconic visuals such as Moby’s ‘Find My Baby’, Franz Ferdinand’s ‘Darts of Pleasure’, David Bowie’s ‘Love Is Lost’, and many more.
 
The plot is straightforward, but the colour palette and shooting style hold attention for the full four minutes. Maxim sits at a poker table with five players and two croupiers. In the next room, two women are caught up with each other, while in the bathroom a third rummages through a bag and swipes a stack of cash. Back at the table, tension rises as the players exchange nervous glances, but Maxim stays calm — and quietly starts to cheat. The girl from the bathroom returns, drops the money onto the table, and Maxim flips his cards to take the pot. Every last note of cash ends up in his hands.
 

A handful of stills from the video were also repurposed for the single’s sleeve artwork, tying the promo’s imagery directly to its physical release. The sleeve itself was art directed by XL Recordings’ Phil Lee and Maxim, with photography by Dominic Davies. For the cover, Dominic photographed the ace card from a custom deck created specially for the shoot — a full set branded with Maxim’s logo was produced for the video. Alongside the main design there was an alternate version, issued on another edition of the single with a different tracklist.

Davies recalls the shot was deceptively tricky: he had to go macro on the ‘Maxim’ logo printed on the ace card, which left a large expanse of white around the subject and made it hard to bring the surrounding environment into frame. On the final cover the ace is pushed right to the top so ‘Maxim’ just fits along the bottom; Davies believes this is why Lee adjusted the colour treatment — to stop that much white from feeling too stark.
 
Speaking about the alternate sleeve, Davies adds that the CD single uses a different arrangement of cards with a more complex composition. He notes there are no out-takes in his own archive because the session was shot on film and the materials went to XL at the time and never came back.

All photos from that Dominic Davies photoshoot will soon be up on our Insta!

Limited-edition promo editions pushed the card motif even further, packaged with a custom ace card printed with Maxim’s logo — the very card Davies photographed for the sleeve — while the CD itself was die-cut in the shape of a playing card, a collectible touch that underlined the single’s visual identity.

The final release came out on 11 September 2000 via XL Recordings, issued on both CD and vinyl. Alongside the radio edit of the title track, the single featured an instrumental version of ‘Scheming’ as well as remixes by other producers. The familiar ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ sound, balanced between hip-hop and trip-hop, also appeared on the single in a version by US duo Blood of Abraham. It’s both cool and a little ironic that the track’s journey went from a straight hip-hop cut to a broken beat/UK garage tune, only to circle back in Blood of Abraham’s remix as a semi obscure hip-hop track once again. Ben Mor of Blood of Abraham recalls that the remix request came about quite naturally.

Ben Mor for All Souvenirs: I believe the way it all went down is that at some point Mo’ Wax Records wanted to sign us, and I am assuming that perhaps James Lavelle passed our ‘Eyedollartree’ album to Maxim / The Prodigy. We heard through the grapevine that they were big fans of it. Then I recall Maxim reaching out to me directly over the phone (back in those days that’s how it was done!) and telling me he was a fan of our second album and that he wanted us to guest on his forthcoming record. Needless to say, we were very honoured, as we were also massive fans of The Prodigy / Maxim.

The remix for ‘Scheming’ followed naturally after Blood of Abraham had already recorded their own track for Maxim’s album, ‘Universal Scientist’. Once that collaboration was in place, Maxim reached out personally to ask if they would also be interested in tackling a remix of ‘Scheming’ — an opportunity they were thrilled to accept.

Ben Mor for All Souvenirs: I believe we only heard the Garage version of ‘Scheming’ when we started the remix. They sent us the acappela vocal splits and we got right to work. I believe it took us about a week to knock out. The remix track was produced 100% from scratch and we only used the original vocals. We co produced the track with our long time collaborator Cyrus Melchor at his ‘Mt.Cyanide Studios’ in Los Angeles. Overall I think the remix held up all these years and I really like all the sonic textures and details we put in the mix.

‘I believe we were one of the last additions to Maxim’s album and the whole thing came out like 2 or 3 months after we submitted it, so we were super stoked on that,’ Ben adds. Looking back, he says they remain grateful to have been part of the project and thankful to Maxim and The Prodigy for having the vision to bring in a semi-obscure West Coast conscious hip-hop crew as collaborators.

In addition to Blood of Abraham cut, the release included a dancefloor–ready 2-step remix from Zed Bias and a rock-leaning cover by King Cheetah. Some editions also included a bonus track titled those very ‘Prism’, which Jim Davies played on.

The single itself was issued in several different versions, and one curious detail is that most six–track editions were actually pressed with a mistake!

The label issued several different UK CD versions: a simple two–track with the radio edit and ‘Prism’; a pair of three–track discs (sold separately as CD1 and CD2) with remixes by Blood of Abraham, Zed Bias and King Cheetah; and finally a six–track digipak that was supposed to combine the contents of those two discs.

The six–track edition also appeared abroad under licence in countries such as Belgium, Spain and Scandinavia. But across all those pressings, including the UK one, track five didn’t match the listing on the sleeve. Instead of the promised instrumental, buyers got the full vocal version of ‘Scheming’ with Trina Allen’s verses — the same mix that later appeared on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’. In other words, most issues of the six–track single carried a misprint.

Digging deeper reveals that the UK promo six–track, pressed before the commercial run, actually had the correct instrumental at track five. Which suggests the mix–up didn’t come from the mastering stage but from the artwork side — the designers appear to have assumed the six–track would simply mirror the two UK three–track discs, when in fact it didn’t.

 
Unfortunately, the confusion carried over into the streaming era in the mid-2010s. On all major platforms today, the single appears as a three-track release, listed as the instrumental, the Zed Bias remix and the King Cheetah cover. In reality, though, the so-called instrumental is actually the album version, while the Zed Bias slot plays the instrumental. Hopefully one day this error will be corrected — a single this strong deserves a little more respect.

Another side story involves Janus Stark, the band of Gizz Butt, former The Prodigy guitarist who left the group in May 1999 after reported disagreements. Janus Stark briefly included their own cover of ‘Scheming’ in live sets during the summer of 2000. According to fan sources like Neko and ProCON (The Prodigy Collective Online News), there were even rumours before the single’s release that this version might be commissioned for the ‘Scheming’ single.

ProCON (Issue #3, July 3rd 2000): ProCON have heard the strong rumour that Maxim has asked Ex-Prodigy guitarist Gizz Butt to remix his next single ‘Scheming’, which also is a collaboration of Maxim with Prodigy main man Liam Howlett and features Maxim’s cousin Trina Allen on vocals. We’ve also heard that Gizz is thinking about performing the song live, at the next gig with own band Janus Stark on 8th July at the Willow Festival in Peterborough (UK) (4.15pm in the afternoon).

For reasons unknown, the choice eventually fell in favour of King Cheetah instead, and the Janus Stark cover was left unreleased. A studio take nevertheless made it onto the tracklist of their second album ‘Built-In Defence Mechanism’ in 2001 (which ultimately went unreleased). There it appeared deliberately mislabelled as ‘Stitches’, likely to avoid conflicts with XL Recordings or with Maxim himself. On the self-released CDR, put out with the band’s approval, Maxim’s name and authorship were nowhere to be found. The actual track ‘Stitches’, however, can still be tracked down online.

Check out more about other side projects involving The Prodigy’s Liam Howlett in our dedicated section: theprodi.gy/side

Headmaster: SPLIT
Additional thanks to: Sixshot, Jim Davies, Dominic Davies, Ben Mor & Blood Of Abraham
‘Maxim’ font: Karl Randay’s ‘Wishbone’

YOOMONEY (RUS): 7928З82272З

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