Music for the Jilted Generation
Music for the Jilted Generation is the second studio album by English electronic music group the Prodigy. It was first released in 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 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. Music and content. "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 Great Britain'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, "Skylined" uses a sample of a sound effect from the 2nd episode of the first season of "The X-Files" and "The Heat (The Energy)" features a sample from "Poltergeist III". 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 "Select" magazine 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. Artwork. 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. Critical reception. "Music for the Jilted Generation" has received critical acclaim. "Rolling Stone" gave it three-and-a-half stars, calling it "truly trippy" and that 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". 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" list. "NME" ranked it number 9 in their "Top 50 Albums of 1994" list. 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. It is included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". Track listing. Samples. Besides the movie samples described above, Liam Howlett also employed a lot of  musical material from other artists: