Music for the Jilted Generation | |
Type: | studio |
Artist: | the Prodigy |
Cover: | TheProdigy-MusicForTheJiltedGeneration.jpg |
Studio: | Earthbound, The Strongroom |
Genre: | |
Length: | 78:07 |
Label: | |
Producer: | |
Prev Title: | Experience |
Prev Year: | 1992 |
Next Title: | The Fat of the Land |
Next Year: | 1997 |
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 Reality was the only member of the band's line-up—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, breakbeat techno, techno, and hardcore techno.
The album is largely a response to the corruption of the rave scene in Britain by its mainstream status as well as the United Kingdom's Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which criminalised raves and parts of rave culture. 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.
Many of the samples featured on the album are sound clips from, or inspired by, movies. "Full Throttle" contains a reverse sample from the original Star Wars movie, and "The Heat (The Energy)" features a sample from Poltergeist III,[2] while "Claustrophobic Sting" contains a recreation of dialogue from .
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 would not fit onto a CD; so "One Love" was edited (resulting in a cut of approximately 3 minutes and 53 seconds), "The Heat (The Energy)" was slightly cut, and "We Eat Rhythm" was left out. "We Eat Rhythm" was later released on a free cassette with Select magazine in October 1994 entitled Select Future Tracks. Howlett later asserted that he felt the edit of "One Love" and "Full Throttle" could have been dropped from the track listing.[2]
The album artwork for Music for the Jilted Generation was designed by Stewart Haygarth (cover) and Les Edwards (inner). The inner art, alluding to the conflicts of raver versus the police during the era of the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, is particularly renowned.[3] [4]
Music for the Jilted Generation has received critical acclaim. Rolling Stone gave it three-and-a-half stars, calling it "truly trippy" and saying it "generates universal dance fever". Alternative Press said it "throws much darker shapes than its predecessor" and "slams harder and rawer and covers more ground".[5]
Robert Christgau called it "one of the rare records that's damn near everything you want cheap music to be".
Mojo ranked it number 83 in their "100 Modern Classics" list, Spin ranked it number 60 in their "90 Greatest Albums of the '90s" [6] and NME ranked it number 9 in their "Top 50 Albums of 1994".[7]
On 4 December 2008, radio presenter Zane Lowe inducted it into his 'masterpieces' by playing the album in full on his BBC Radio 1 show.
It was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize in 1994 and is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[8]
"An amazing record," remarked David Bowie. "It impressed me quite a lot."[9]
Besides the movie samples described above, Liam Howlett also employed a lot of musical material from other artists:[10]
Chart (1994) | Position |
---|---|
Dutch Albums (Album Top 100)[16] | 52 |
German Albums (Offizielle Top 100)[17] | 71 |
Icelandic Albums (Tónlist)[18] | 10 |
Chart (1995) | Position |
Belgian Albums (Ultratop Flanders)[19] | 72 |
UK Albums (OCC)[20] | 89 |
Chart (1997) | Position |
Australian Albums (ARIA)[21] | 64 |
New Zealand Albums (RMNZ)[22] | 17 |