When the owner of the record company you've just signed up with asks you to produce an album, what do you do? If you're Prodigy mastermind Liam Howlett, you tell her to forget it. "Yeah, Madonna asked me to produce her album," Howlett told ATN last week. "There's no way I would even think about that. There's no way that I'd commercialize our sound. I wouldn't give our sound away. To give that to Madonna is like selling my soul to the devil. It's absolutely no good."

With their third album, The Fat Of The Land, still in the U. S. top 10, and with worldwide sales in the millions, Howlett can afford to be particular. Despite numerous calls for his services, the producer/songwriter is turning all offers down at present. "Anything I do at the moment is for Prodigy," he said. "This is what's happening for us. I shouldn't be distracted in any way from what I'm doing here at the moment."

Howlett did say that he hoped to collaborate with other artists. "I found it interesting collaborating with a band like Rage Against The Machine," he said, referring to the song "One Man Army" that he worked on with Rage guitarist Tom Morello, and which appears on the Spawn soundtrack album. "I've spoken to Korn, and I would imagine if all the guys are into it that at some point we'll get together."