two years pass...
Experience and Jilted are about to be re-released with all sorts of extra bits and bobs. I for one am very excited about the Jilted redux - what a fucking album! And yes, Claustrophobic Sting is fucking awesome.
Full gen(eration):
Few artists or bands managed to release epoch-defining albums. To each scene there are
the chosen few long players that have taken their place in the canon of records that changed
the shape of popular culture. Psychedelia has Sgt Pepper’s…, punk has Never Mind the
Bollocks…, trip hop has Blue Lines… The list is endless with each scene, each genre and
every subgenre declaring key albums as defining moments. But only a small handful actually
make it onto these lists… Like I said, very few artists or bands manage to release epoch-
defining albums. And even fewer manage two.
Welcome (back) to The Prodigy, who have released more than their share of essential, era-
defining albums. None more so then these two albums; ‘The Prodigy Experience’ and ‘Music
for the Jilted Generation’ – each a perfect summary of their time, each a signpost to brave
new futures.
1992 Britain. The free party movement had evolved into the spectacular turbo-driven rave
scene. The media had turned weekend enjoyment into full-blown moral panic while the
police seemed to devote much of their overtime to chasing down these folk devil ravers.
Huge events drew like-minded souls from everywhere with the promise of hedonistic
pleasure and the sense of enlightened positivity gained from a heady mix of good pills and
dancing all night to pounding, furious breaks-driven hardcore. The air was filled with a sense
of victory. In the war of the raves, it was the ravers who seemed to be winning. And the
Prodigy were there, soundtracking the battles, scoring the victories and capturing the all
round joi de vivre with their brilliantly energised singles.
It was into these defiantly grinning times that The Prodigy unleashed their debut album ‘The
Prodigy Experience’ In late November ’92 and it immediately flew in the face of that over
used idiom, ‘dance bands can’t make good albums’. In ‘Experience’, Liam Howlett and co
succeeded in combining the energy of the rave with stunning and timeless production
depths. “I remember I had this idea of doing like a rave concept album”, says Liam “but in
the end I thought it was too restricting. What I wanted was a full experience, you know like
you get with one of the early Pink Floyd albums. Something for every mood but still
obviously from the rave scene.” To the Prodigy fans most of the album came as no shock,
featuring as it did versions of all of their top 5 singles to date, alongside other live faves from
the band’s already incendiary shows.
The singles appear in brilliantly reworked versions. ‘Charly’ has all but the slightest hint of
the cartoon cat eliminated, in its place sits an adrenalised hard and dark, cut up breaks
version sub-titled ‘Trip into Drum and Bass Version’. While some two years later the media
would grapple with the notion that drum’n’bass was the new version of jungle, The Prodigy
EXPERIENCE
JERICHO
MUSIC REACH 1/2/3/4
WIND IT UP
YOUR LOVE REMIX
HYPERSPEED G-FORCE PART 2
CHARLY
TRIP INTO DRUM AND BASS VERSION
OUT OF SPACE
EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE
155 AND RISING
WEATHER EXPERIENCE
FIRE SUNRISE VERSION
RUFF IN THE JUNGLE BIZNESS
DEATH OF THE PRODIGY DANCERS LIVE
RELEASE DATE : 4 AUGUST 2008
LABEL : XL RECORDINGS
had been describing the subterranean sound thus since November 1992.
Elsewhere, ‘Everybody In The Place’ takes on a fresher, more vital air about it while ‘G-Force’
is all but transformed into a full on hyper speed anthem going under the name ‘Hyperspeed
G-Force Pt 2’. ‘Out of Space”’ (the single that followed the album) presents a rough neck
skanking groove with a lift from Max Romeo’s classic ‘Chase the Devil’.
If proof was needed of The Prodigy mainman Liam Howlett’s true potential it lay in the
album’s finest moment ‘Weather Report’, an almost psychedelic episode that opens with a
low drone and weather forecasts before emerging into a grandiose, yet somber string-led
refrain. The track then collapsed into a series of abstract noises before launching a
downtempo breakbeat that carried the vibe towards it’s huge, thundering climax; complete
with the full on acid madness of a rampant 303 squelching with the intensity of a lightning
bolt. A brilliant track that was to give a huge hint as to the future of The Prodigy. A far more
complex and assured sound that was moving in completely different direction to route the
rave scene was disappearing down.
‘Experience’ entered the charts at number 12, selling over 200,000 copies over the following
weeks. As a result The Prodigy not only successfully managed to move into the territory of
the serious, long-term artist (until that point dominated by the rock scene) but also managed
to completely sidestep the fact that the days of the rave were coming to an end.
This, of course, was Howlett’s intention. It was as much a statement of the band’s future as
it was a summing up of the rave era. In every inch of the album Howlett was playing with
preconceptions of what this scene’s music should sound like, what the scene actually was
and how it should be represented. Indeed, even the album artwork challenged the
stereotyped computer-generated, multi-coloured images of the era. It’s plain black and
white cover opened up to present had drawn cartoon images of the band members
fashioned by future author of The Beach, Alex Garland. Coming as Experience did at a time
when dance artists simply didn’t release albums Liam Howlett had nothing from the
contemporary scene to use as a standard. As a result he set his own standards, something
that would remain a feature of his work.
Released here with an extra disc of rare tracks, mixes and live versions (including ‘Android’
from the very first Prodigy single, originally drawn from the demo Liam had sent to XL), this
all new expanded Experience offers the definitive version of the rave era’s greatest album.
MARTIN JAMES 2008
EXPANDED
YOUR LOVE
RUFF IN THE JUNGLE BIZNESS
UPLIFTING VIBES REMIX
CHARLY ALLEY CAT REMIX
FIRE EDIT
WE ARE THE RUFFEST
WEATHER EXPERIENCE
TOP BUZZ REMIX
WIND IT UP REWOUND
G-FORCE ENERGY FLOW
CRAZY MAN
OUT OF SPACE
TECHNO UNDERWORLD REMIX
EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE
FAIRGROUND REMIX
ANDROID
OUT OF SPACE
LIVE FROM PUKKELPOP 2005
DISC 1 1 INTRO 2 BREAK & ENTER
3 THEIR LAW (FEATURING POP WILL EAT ITSELF)
4 FULL THROTTLE 5 VOODOO PEOPLE 6 SPEEDWAY (THEME FROM FASTLANE) 7 THE HEAT (THE ENERGY) 8 POISON
9 NO GOOD (START THE DANCE) 10 ONE LOVE (EDIT) THE NARCOTIC SUITE
11 3 KILOS 12 SKYLINED 13 CLAUSTROPHOBIC STING
DISC 2
1 VOODOO PEOPLE (RADIO MAIDA VALE SESSION)
2 POISON (RADIO MAIDA VALE SESSION)
3 BREAK AND ENTER (2005 LIVE EDIT) 4 THEIR LAW (LIVE AT PUKKELPOP) 5 NO GOOD (START THE DANCE) (BAD FOR YOU MIX) 6 SCIENIDE
7 GOA (THE HEAT THE ENERGY PART 2)
8 RAT POISON
9 VOODOO PEOPLE (DUST BROTHERS REMIX)
RELEASE DATE : 4 AUGUST 2008 LABEL : XL RECORDINGS
MORE MUSIC FOR THE JILTED GENERATION
Soon after the release of ‘Experience the rave scene turned sour. Draconian anti-noise
measures were placed on legal raves and government legislations were put in place that
would outlaw the free party vibe forever. The government proposed its Criminal Justice
Bill that would turn an entire generation of people into criminals overnight. Unwittingly
the simple act of dancing in a field to a loud sound system had become a political act.
Even more unwittingly The Prodigy would become figureheads for this politicisation
when they released their second album ‘Music for the Jilted Generation in July 1994.
It was the beginning of 1994, The Prodigy had scored six top twenty hits in the UK,
they’d been awarded a gold disc for Experience, they’d toured through much of the
world and still their average age was only twenty three. However the next task of taking
things forward now fell squarely upon Liam’s shoulders. For the first time since the band
started they took a lengthy rest from their constant performing so that Liam could get to
work on the next album. He knew he had to move things beyond the limitations of the
rave arena, and in the process of taking the Prodigy live experience around the globe he
had come into close contact with bands that had excited him in a way that reminded him
of the early days of the free parties. Bands like Rage Against the Machine and Jane’s
Addiction who had a vibe and an energy that he immediately hooked into.
“When we were doing all of these shows in America I started listening to a lot more guitar
based stuff.” he explains “Up until then I’d always ignored anything that was in any way
rock because it just meant leather jackets and greasy hair to me. Then I heard
‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana and it just blew me away.”
Originally penciled in as both ‘Music for the Cool Youth Juvenilia’ and the potentially
more controversial ‘Music for Joy Riders’, the album Music for the Jilted Generation was
a far more assured, experimental and eclectic journey than that offered on the debut
album. The album’s intro employed an appropriation of dialogue from the film The
Lawnmower Man, featuring the sound of someone hammering away at a typewriter
before announcing: “So I’ve decided to take my music back underground, to stop it
falling into the wrong hands”.
It was a statement of intent for Liam. No longer was he a part off any particular scene,
The Prodigy had transcended any limitations imposed by particular genres, instead he
took what ever he wanted, from which ever genre he wanted, in order to create music
that was The Prodigy and not a representation of a particular scene. In a sense therefore
the theme of the album was less ‘party’ than ‘personal’ politics.
The subsequent range of styles, tempos and flavours was breathtaking. From the darkly
brooding delinquency of ‘Break and Enter’ to the hard and fast techno metal of ‘Their
Law’ (which featured post-grebo sample hooligans Pop Will Eat Itself), from the up
tempo techno soundtrack rush of ‘Speedway’ to the down tempo b-boy grooves of
‘Poison’ the album displayed Liam’s abilities to be far reaching.
One of the most outstanding aspects of “…Jilted…” was Liam’s creative freedom that
enabled him to explore ideas unhindered. Nowhere is this clearer than on the concept
section of the album. Collectively called ‘The Narcotic Suite’, it was made up of three
separate tracks which moved from the sixties film noire soundtrack of ‘3 Kilos’, through
the techno hedonism of ‘Skylined’ and then into the deep, suffocating grooves of
‘Claustrophobic Sting’. A sequence of tracks that saw Liam moving through styles with
an in depth knowledge and understanding of both his sources and his ambitions.
Elsewhere ‘Voodoo People’ featured a hard shuffling snare with an insistent flute refrain
which was overlaid by a guitar sample of Nirvana’s ‘Very Ape’.
The album’s release in July ‘94 was met by a hugely positive response from fans and
critics alike. For those who had followed the band this album mirrored an almost
collective growth. The so-called summers of love had turned out to offer little more than
hollow ideals. Furthermore ravers had grown up since the early days and the Prodigy
had grown right along side their contemporaries.
Music for the Jilted Generation entered the the UK chart at #1 and remained in the top
twenty for four months after its release, going gold after only two weeks. It was at this
point the most successful underground dance album of all time and a few months later
it was short listed for the prestigious Mercury Award. Despite losing out to adult house
sounds of M People, the guest critics for the television coverage were almost unanimous
in their praise for ‘Jilted’ with journalist Miranda Sawyer describing it as “the only
modern sounding album” among the nominees. Where ‘Experience’ proved that a
singles oriented dance act could produce a great, era-defining album, Music for the
Jilted Generation is the set that truly set out the cultural terrain for the music scene of
the years that followed. It remains the blueprint for dance acts with a taste for rock, and
rock acts with a love of electronic music. It has inspired and invigorated everyone from
The Chemical Brothers to The Beastie Boys, Oasis to Gorrilaz It counts among its fans
Dave Grohl, Klaxons, Jay-Z and Pendulum. Newer bands like 30 Seconds To Mars and
CSS cite the album as much as old warhorses like Paul McCartney and Bono. ‘Music for
the Jilted Generation’ is in every sense the first album to truly reach beyond the UK
dance scene and reach cross genre, generational and ideological divides. It’s still only
true representation of Britain in the mid-90s (no retro rock Brit Pop or record company
manufactured fodder here). It remains a brilliant all-reaching act of genius that will
continue to inspire artists young and old to reach way beyond their own potential. This
2008 version comes complete with live tracks from the band’s excellent Zane Lowe set
for Radio 1 in 2006 alongside rare mixes and overlooked tracks. It is in every way the
perfect version of one of the greatest albums to have emerged from the UK.
Two albums. Two moments in time captured. Both as astonishing today as the day they
first hit the streets. It’s time to rediscover The Prodigy.
MARTIN JAMES 2008
― CharlieNo4, Friday, 11 July 2008 14:30 (fifteen years ago) link
one year passes...
one year passes...