The Prodigy reissue ‘Breathe’ on 12-inch for its 30th anniversary, with Glitch Mob and Mefjus & Camo & Krooked remixes, out Nov. 13
Thirty years after it landed, “Breathe” is getting its own 12-inch. The Prodigy announced Thursday (Sept. 24) that a 30th anniversary edition of the track arrives Friday, Nov. 13 via XL Recordings, two days after the single hits the three-decade mark on Nov. 11. Pre-orders are open now.
Four tracks, and the running order tells you who it is for. Side A pairs the original with the Glitch Mob remix. Side B carries the Mefjus & Camo & Krooked remix and, crucially, the instrumental.
The Instrumental Is the Real Draw
Strip Keith Flint and Maxim off “Breathe” and what remains is a chassis. The corkscrewing riff, the low-end pressure, and the drum programming that translated jungle’s aggression into something that could level a rock festival without sounding like either genre. On a 12-inch, with no vocal to work around, it becomes a tool again. That is how this catalog functioned before it hardened into canon, and pressing it back onto wax is a more useful gesture than another remaster.
The two remixes have both been circulating in sets without ever getting a proper vinyl pressing. The Mefjus & Camo & Krooked version, an Austrian drum & bass summit released officially through XL, has been a fixture in DnB rooms since it landed. Camo & Krooked called it an honour to put out an official remix of one of their most influential tunes, which is the sort of thing artists say, except in this case the lineage is real and audible.
The Glitch Mob’s take comes from the other end of the map, the Los Angeles bass scene that turned this kind of half-time heft into a whole aesthetic in the early 2010s. Both have been described as highly sought after, which in practice means people have spent years ripping them from streams. Now they are catalogued.
Why This One Still Matters
“Breathe” was the second single from The Fat of the Land, giving Liam Howlett and co. their second consecutive UK Number One after “Firestarter.” The Walter Stern-directed video took the Viewer’s Choice prize at the 1997 MTV VMAs and the International Viewer’s Choice Award for MTV Europe, which mattered enormously at a moment when a British rave act breaking American television was not a given.
The album it came from, released June 30, 1997, topped the UK chart and the Billboard 200 and has sold more than 10 million copies. It was cut at Strongroom in London and Earthbound in Braintree, Essex, and was the first Prodigy record to feature contributions from Flint. Q placed it 47th on its list of the greatest British albums in 2000. It turns 30 next summer, and given that XL put out a 25th anniversary edition in 2022, nobody should expect that date to pass quietly.
The reissue also lands mid-campaign rather than in a vacuum. The Prodigy play their first New York show in 17 years on Friday (Sept. 25), following a summer of Warrior’s Dance outdoor shows in Manchester, Edinburgh, Milton Keynes and Dublin plus a European festival run. They have been announced as the first headliner for Creamfields 2027, their first appearance at the festival since 2013.
New material remains the open question. Howlett told NME late last year that new Prodigy music would surface this year, describing the direction as a more extreme version of the “evil rave” tag he has used for decades. Nothing has arrived yet.
A 30th anniversary 12-inch is not new music, and it would be generous to pretend otherwise. What it does is keep the catalog physically in circulation while the studio work takes as long as it takes, and hand DJs a pressing of a track that has never stopped working on a floor.
Thirty years on, “Breathe” has not aged into nostalgia. It has aged into infrastructure.
