4.7.19

The Prodigy ‎– Music For The Jilted Generation 25 Years



Music for the Jilted Generation is the second studio album by English electronic music group The Prodigy. It was first released on 4 July 1994 by XL Recordings in the United Kingdom and by Mute Records in the United States. Just as on the group’s debut album Experience (1992), Maxim Realitywas the only member of the band's lineup—besides Liam Howlett—to contribute to the album.
A remastered and expanded edition of the album titled More Music for the Jilted Generation was released in 2008.[1]

Music for the Jilted Generation uses elements of rave,[2] breakbeat techno,[2] techno,[3] hardcore techno,[4] and oldskool jungle.[4]
The album is largely a response to the corruption of the rave scene in Britain by its mainstream status as well as Great Britain's Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which criminalised raves and parts of rave culture.[2] This is exemplified in the song "Their Law" with the spoken word intro and the predominant lyric, the "Fuck 'em and their law" sample. Many years later, after the controversy died down, Liam Howlett derided the title of the album, which he referred to as "stupid", and maintained that the album was never meant to be political in the first place.[5]
Many of the samples featured on the album are sound clips from, or inspired by, movies. "Intro" features a sample that sounds like it's from the film The Lawnmower Man, however it is an American voice on "Intro" instead of Pierce Brosnan's English accent and the words are subtly different (on "Intro" the words are "So, I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands",[6] but in The Lawnmower Man the line is "So I'm taking my work underground, I can't let it fall into the wrong hands again"[7]). "Their Law" begins with a rephrased version of a quote from Smokey and the Bandit.[8] Jackie Gleason's exasperated line "What we're dealing with here is a complete lack of respect for the law" becomes "what we're dealing with here is a total lack of respect for the law". "Full Throttle" contains a reverse sample from the original Star Wars movie, and "The Heat (The Energy)" features a sample from Poltergeist III.[5] In "Claustrophobic Sting", a voice whispers "My mind is glowing",[9] similar to HAL 9000 saying "My mind is going"[10] in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.
When Liam Howlett came to the cutting room for the final phase in the album production, he realised that all the tracks he had originally planned for wouldn't fit onto a CD, so "One Love" had to be edited which resulted in a cut of approximately 3 minutes and 53 seconds, "The Heat (The Energy)" was slightly cut, and the track called "We Eat Rhythm" was left out. "We Eat Rhythm" was later released on a free cassette with Selectmagazine in October 1994 entitled Select Future Tracks. Liam Howlett later asserted that he felt the edit of "One Love" and "Full Throttle" could have been dropped from the track listing.[5]
"The Narcotic Suite" includes live flute parts, played by Phil Bent. Originally, Howlett asked Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull to play this part or to give permission to use samples of one of his flute parts; according to Anderson, the letter from Howlett got stuck in his office and when Ian found it, the album was already released.

Samples

Besides the movie samples described above, Liam Howlett also employed a lot of musical material from other artists:[11]
  • "Break and Enter" contains sample from Baby D's "Casanova". The latter was also remixed by Liam.;
  • "Their Law" contains sample from "Drop That Bassline" by Techno Grooves.
  • "Voodoo People" contains sample from "You're Starting Too Fast" by Johnny Pate and "The Shalimar" by Gylan Kain. The guitar riff is based on "Very Ape" by Nirvana and is played by Lance Riddler.
  • "The Heat (The Energy)" contains sample from "Why'd U Fall" by Lil Louis, "Thousand" by Moby and 2-Mad's "Don't Hold Back The Feeling".
  • "Poison" contains sample from "It's a New Day" by Skull Snaps and Bernard "Pretty" Purdie's "Heavy Soul Singer" .
  • "No Good (Start The Dance)" contains sample from "No Good for Me" by Kelly Charles and "Funky Nassau" by Bahamian funk group The Beginning of the End.
  • "One Love" uses the "Arabic Muezzin" sample from the ethnic vocals section of a Zero G sample CD by "Time + Space" Records. The same sample was also used in "Everybody Say Love" by "The Magi & Emanation" which was remixed by Liam Howlett.[12]
  • "3 Kilos", Part One of The Narcotic Suite, is based on a riff sampled from Bernard "Pretty" Purdie's Good Livin' (Good Lovin')
  • "Skylined", Part Two of The Narcotic Suite, features sample from a piece of musical score by Mark Snow from The X-Files episode "Deep Throat" (season 1, episode 2).[13]

R.I.P. Keith. 

 #KeefFlint69to19