‘Warrior’s Dance’ Single Turned 15!
In May 2024, Warrior’s Dance turned 15 years old – it’s the second commercial single from the Invaders Must Die LP, released 2.5 months after its premiere. Today, All Souvenirs will continue to tell the story of the ‘Invaders’ era releases in honour of the anniversary: this time, as always, we’ll take apart all versions of the track, share some stories about exclusive demos and remixes, reveal the memories from the music video shoot, add a couple of rare details behind the design and recall some other interesting cases related to this tune…
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The final version of the front cover was ready by 3 April 2009, according to the original image file properties
The physical single Warrior’s Dance was released on 11 May 2009 and peaked at number 9 in the UK Singles Chart, becoming one of The Prodigy’s most recognisable tracks and continuing to thrill fans years after its release. The chorus ‘Come with me to the dancefloor, you and me, ’cause that’s what it’s for’ was sampled from the house banger Take Me Away by Detroit techno-industrial band Final Cut, featuring Bridget Grace on vocals.
Clash Music Review: ‘Warrior’s Dance’ reinforces the ‘Experience’ feel, drifting into focus on ominously buzzing keys before exploding into a day-glo riot of neon colour and mind-altering uppers, a simple vocal line celebrating the simple pleasure of losing oneself on a dancefloor. It’s perfectly balanced – its low end hitting hard while the higher-pitched elements sit pretty atop a solid backbone of thunderous beats and wailing effects. There’s also a slight eastern mood in the breaks – an echo, perhaps, of ‘Narayan’ from album three, 1997’s ‘The Fat Of The Land’.
Not much is known about the production of the track. As Liam said in Track by Track (Talk Through), it was probably about fourth of fifth tune to get written for the album. It was played for the first time almost exactly a year before the release of the single, at The Prodigy’s first show in spring 2008: on 16th May at Plug (Sheffield, UK) the band presented 3 new tunes – ‘World’s On Fire’, ‘Beat 55’ and ‘Warrior’s Dance’.
The version performed at that time differed only slightly from the final album version: the mood and sound were almost identical, except for the opening saxophone sample at the beginning (Liam Howlett, The Prodigy mastermind, chopped the melody differently on the album) and a vocal sample of Addis Posse‘s Let The Warriors Dance, another classic 1990 rave anthem. In the video from 17 May (the second performance of the track) you can clearly hear a short chop of the word ‘Let’ (at 1:34 and 2:38) – that’s almost all the difference from the album version.
Clash Music: The track ‘Warrior’s Dance’ is amazing – harks back to the old Prodigy days without being revisionist. Have you been revisiting older records?
Liam: Absolutely. So we had the Gatercrasher gig looming and Keith suggested we fucked the album for a minute and focus on a new tune to play that doesn’t even have to go on the album. We know it’s got to be a banging tune that’s easy to digest on the first listen. So we went into the studio and had the twenty years of acid house in our heads and started listening to all that great music again: Renegade Soundwave, Shut Up and Dance… All that early shit and found I really loved it again.
Keith: I mean it sounds really crap, but even the smell of the old records and holding the vinyl again… It gets you reflecting on the old stories and the vibes. Not trying to make it sound all deep, but it was fucking great and that’s what the band is really all about. That feeling.
WARRIOR’S DANCE SAMPLES
- Sample: saxophone
- Sample source: Angel – Sweet Dreams (Nightmare Mix) [Angel / Sweet Dreams (Nightmare Mix), 1990]
- Note: The melody was rearranged.
- Sample: vocals (‘come with me to the dance floor, you and me cause that’s what it’s for, show me now what is it, we got to be doing and the music in the house is so’) & instrumental
- Sample source: True Faith with Final Cut – Take Me Away (Extended House Mix) [Take Me Away, 1991]
- Note: The sample source is listed in the booklet of ‘Invaders Must Die’: Contains a sample of ‘Take Me Away’ (Grace/Mills/Srock) by Final Cut with True Faith by courtesy of Final Cut Productions. Published by Sherlock Holmes Music Ltd/Chelsea Music Publishing Co Ltd/Incentive Music/Bucks Music. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
- Sample: vocals (‘aaaah, do it!’) & break
- Interpolation source: 2 Live Crew – Mega-Mixx II [Move Somthin’, 1988]
- Note: It’s very likely that this sample was replayed by ‘Scorccio Replays’.
- Sample: beat
- Sample source: Addis Posse – Let The Warriors Dance (Funky Funky Drum Drum Mix) [Let The Warriors Dance, 1990]
- Sample: shout (‘woo’)
- Sample source: Iggy Pop – African Man [New Values, 1979]
- Sample: break
- Sample source: Bernard Purdie – Caravan [Soul Drums, 1968]
According to Track by Track (Talk Through), Liam admitted that he was struggling to make this album and decided to distract himself by making a tune that nobody had any particular expectations of. This was a turning point in the creation of new material and gave Howlett the enthusiasm and excitement that had been sorely lacking. In addition, Howlett noted that ‘Warrior’s Dance’ was to ‘Invaders Must Die’ what Firestarter was to The Fat Of The Land, it set the bar and gave him a sense of what a fresh Prodge record should sound like.
Speaking to Clash Music, Howlett reflected on the fact that he’s not too thrilled with how quickly the band’s live recordings are spreading across the web, but he’s kind of amused by it. It’s important to understand that we’re talking about 2008, when it was physically impossible to film an entire concert in HD or 4K and then upload it to YouTube the same night, as is the case these days. Liam’s attitude to this is much more rigorous now, but in the late 2000s, fans had to make do with shaky, pixelated videos in tiny resolutions with a horrible, rumbling sound that was almost impossible to make out.
Clash Music (2009): What do you think of the internet in terms of music? Is it a good thing, or a hindrance?
Liam Howlett (2009): I’m cool with it now. As everyone who knows me knows, I was dead against it on the last record. I’m down with it now, totally behind it. I like the fact that we play something like ‘Warrior’s Dance’ out live and some shitty little clip from someone’s phone gets a ridiculous amount of hits on YouTube. That to me is great, almost guerrilla. That was just a phone clip with fucking awful sound, but people wanted it.
Years later, in late 2017, the very first version of ‘Warrior’s Dance’ was leaked, very close to the one played at the first live shows since spring 2008. It also included a sample of Addis Posse’s ‘Let The Warriors Dance’, but here the title line is presented in full, unlike the versions played live. Anthony Srock, former member of Final Cut and co-writer of ‘Take Me Away’, posted this demo on his MySpace page (now deleted).
There is a 99 percent chance that this is the exact version that appeared on the rare 4-track promo released by Take Me To The Hospital in 2008. In addition to the ‘Warrior’s Dance’ demo, it also contained rough versions of Take Me To The Hospital, World’s On Fire and Piranha, which also differed from the album versions in terms of sound, samples and structure. This promo CD was leaked towards the end of 2008, but no further information has surfaced yet – even the exact order of the tracks on the disc has not been revealed. These promos were given to music journalists, while the recordings themselves had unique watermarks, making it easy for the label to trace who leaked them. First a solid mix of four short fragments of the above tracks appeared in autumn 2008, and then the full tracks began to appear online in one form or another.
‘Warrior’s Dance’ Music Video
A month before the single’s release, on 3 April 2009, a stop-motion/puppetry video was unveiled, set in a bar and featuring cigarette packet people dancing. A week earlier, at the end of March, the video was to premiered exclusively on Channel 4 in the UK, but this had to be changed – probably because the work was completed at the last moment.
The video was directed by Corin Hardy, who has also worked with artists including Ed Sheeran, Horrors and Keane. Interestingly, Hardy had wanted to make a video like this long before ‘Warrior’s Dance’, but it was his collaboration with The Prodigy that allowed him to bring the idea to life. Never a smoker, Corin had been making cigarette packet people since the age of 14 to attract the girls’ attention, and over time this idea grew into something of a concept that Hardy wanted to unleash.
Although some of the scenes were shot against a green screen, there is almost no CG in the video, with the exception of the peanut animation. Even the fire in the frame is natural: The Prodigy have once again declared themselves to be real firestarters. Speaking to promonews.tv, Hardy emphasised that he ‘particularly wanted the fire shots to be in camera as they are never really convincing otherwise’. Johnny Sabbagh, who was responsible for the puppetry, parried: ‘We nearly set fire to a pub… good times’.
Just 2 days before the single’s release, on 9th May 2009, Corin Hardy’s team released a behind-the-scenes video explaining their vision of the concept and showing exclusive footage from the shoot. It turns out that ‘Warrior’s Dance’ was filmed at London’s Haggerston pub at 438 Kingsland Rd – the pub’s signage is deliberately removed from the video and it’s not easy to identify the address, but we managed to track down the location.
According to the clapperboard shot, filming took place in February-March 2009, just over a month before the music video premiered.
Corin Hardy for promonews.tv: We shot on a location in Hackney in a pub and built a false bar top which we could then use in the green screen shoot for both puppets and animation. We created a library of green screen of puppets dancing so we could layer them up for the big wide shots and have them all doing different dance moves. We did think about using CG but I wanted to have an organic feel throughout and in the end there is only one element which is CG – and that’s the peanut.
I’ve always loved the Grimm fairy tales and there is little of elves and shoemakers in this idea for me, as well as Gremlins – one of my favourite films when I was an adolescent and still magic to me.
The Prodigy were very excited about the idea of the video and Mike Champion, the band’s manager since almost the beginning of their career, was present at the shoot. Corin Hardy himself spoke to promonews.tv with incredible enthusiasm about working with the band: ‘Working with The Prodigy was fantastic. They got into the idea straight away and stayed with us through the long process and never flinched away from a piece that would be a really difficult one to get shown on TV due to the cigarettes that are in it’.
Captured in Corin Hardy’s studio, 2024.
Image courtesy of Darren Washington
Speaking to Media Magazine in December 2012, Corin recalled that he’d previously pitched the same idea to three different bands and been rejected each time – but looking back, he’s sure none of them would have been a good fit, so he’s very grateful to The Prodigy for the opportunity. In the summer of 2009, Corin’s work won the Best Video category at the Rushes Soho Shorts festival.
The three protagonists of the video who sneak into the bar are a reference to the three members of The Prodigy, Liam, Keith and Maxim: Corin did not want to directly copy the images of the boys, but at the same time tried to create a unique character for each one. The three cigarette packs carry the standard warning about the dangers of smoking in Ukrainian, ‘Куріння шкодить здоровью’, while the match that starts the fire is struck against a matchbox labelled ‘Русская почта’ (‘Russian Post’). Each of the three packs features the ‘Take Me To The Hospital’ incription as well as other recognisable elements of the band’s imagery.
From time to time, promotional postcards appeared on eBay and other sources, showing pack schemes, assembly instructions and Corin’s working notes on them – cool stuff for The Prodigy collectors!
Single release & everything after
The single was released on Australian iTunes on 17 April (with only a shortened Edit of the title track) and had its world premiere on 11 May. The single was released on CD and vinyl, as well as an iTunes release and a special download version. In addition to remixes by South Central, Benga, Kicks Like A Mule and Future Funk Squad (all four are pretty big assaults on the eardrums and well worth the asking price), the track listing for the release included the album mix and the same edit version.
While no significant information about the official remixes could be found, we did unearth some rare details about two unreleased remixes of ‘Warrior’s Dance’ that were done at the request of The Prodigy, but for various reasons were never officially released on behalf of the band…
The first remix comes from British music producer Vicarious Bliss, one of the former residents of French dance label Ed Banger Records – its most notable exes include Mr. Oizo, SebastiAn and of course Justice, an old favourite of Liam Howlett’s.
The remix was posted on the website of the now defunct Orlando Boom party series on 30 March 2010 – the organisers asked the artist to send them a promo track for the upcoming weekend event, to which Vicarious Bliss did not hesitate to send a rejected work for The Prodigy. The author of the post jokingly asks the band’s management not to bother him with unnecessary questions: ‘We asked him for some sort of promo spiel ahead of Saturday’s shenanigans, so as the man of refreshing candour he clearly is, he decided to illegally send us a world premier, six months late, of his rework of The Prodigy’s ‘Warriors Dance’. Sue him, not us please…’
The tune was originally intended for the remix edition of ‘Invaders Must Die’, released in November 2009, but the artist didn’t have enough time to finish his version properly and the track was eventually shelved. In the above-mentioned post for Orlando Boom, Vicarious Bliss himself had this to say: ‘I wanted to do something a bit ‘ravey-gravey’ and listening back, um, I’m not sure what happened really ?! The real fuzz-bass at the end is good though…’
The second unreleased remix of ‘Warrior’s Dance’ can be found right on the artists’ official Soundcloud page: on 14 September 2011, British dance-punk band Hadouken! uploaded their version of the track on their profile. In over 12 years, the track has reached a quarter of a million listens — not bad for an unreleased track that more than half of The Prodigy’s fans don’t even know about.
The story of this record began in 2010 when Hadouken! were running a video blog on YouTube called BLOGDOUKEN – a kind of travelogue similar to the ones filmed by Paul Dugdale for The Prodigy’s official channel. In the 8th episode (not the 7th, as Wikipedia says!) the guys shared their impressions of their warm-up show with The Prodigy in Tokyo on 20th September 2009 at the Warrior’s Dance Festival (we’ll share the separate story behind it below). In the background of their talk an unreleased remix of ‘Warrior’s Dance’ was playing! The track was overlaid with voices, and the full version was unavailable for a long time, while YouTube and other platforms were later filled with fake fan-made cuts, each trying to recreate the full structure in their own way, cutting the voices out of the mix (or not even cutting them out at all). Perhaps, as with Vicarious Bliss, the remix was either not finished in time for the ‘Invaders Must Die’ remix compilation, or was rejected by the band or management. More than a year later, after some fan-made edits had gone viral, Hadouken! decided to officially upload the full mix to their SoundCloud page, apparently having received no complaints from The Prodigy or their label about leaking the tune…
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The track solidified its iconic status in the fall of 2009 when an entire music festival was titled after it, held four times over the span of four years. The first Warriors Dance Festival took place on 20 September 2009 in Tokyo, Japan (as we mentioned with the Hadouken! case above). By 2010, it had grown into one of the band’s most massive performances ever. On July 24, 2010, a show was held at Milton Keynes Bowl in front of 65,000 people, and was released a year later on the DVD/Blu-ray ‘World’s On Fire’. The next festival was held on September 15, 2012, in Belgrade, Serbia, and the last one took place in Novi Sad, Serbia, on July 12, 2013.
In one way or another, the track that wasn’t even planned for the LP, and was supposed to be a simple filler for just one gig, became one of the album’s main hit singles, gave the title to a huge music festival, and founded one of the key elements of The Prodigy’s fan cult (if you will). Stay tuned for more updates on the 15th anniversary of ‘Invaders Must Die’ – we’ve got plenty more surprises in store for you, our little warriors!
Headmasters: SPLIT
Additional thanks to: Sixshot, Jordan Atkinson, Darren Washington
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