#Jilted30: Intro / Break & Enter · Story

In July 2024, the iconic Music for the Jilted Generation turned 30. To mark the occasion, we’re starting a new long-running series of articles dedicated to the story of each track from The Prodigy‘s second album. We’ll go in order: in this article, we’ll share all the known facts about the album’s opening Intro, as well as the second track Break & Enter, a live performance of which still remains, for many, the quintessential atmosphere of the electronic punks’ live shows.

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Music For The Jilted Generation is a true sign of the times: from start to finish, the release is filled with colorful echoes of the rebellious spirit of the early to mid-1990s, which manifests itself from the very first seconds of the album. The album’s opening epilogue (‘So I’ve decided to take my work back underground… to stop it falling into the wrong hands’) is the group’s direct response to the commercialization of rave culture: Liam Howlett, the brains and creative force behind The Prodigy, signaled a conscious retreat from mainstream pressures and a desire to preserve the raw, dirty, and unpolished essence of their music. It may seem ironic that the band’s second album became their first real commercial success, but at the same time The Prodigy cemented their status as staunch defenders of the underground.

Break & Enter

After the brief intro and the creaking door sound, the glass-shattering effect in the next track, Break & Enter, snaps you back to reality and continues this cinematic vibe, at once harking back to the Experience era while introducing listeners to an entirely new, darker side of Liam’s music.

Liam Howlett for Martin Roach: It had the feel of the rhythm section of ‘Charly’ but still very different. The beats are similar, I suppose it would have been what I could have done if I had re-mixed a long version of ‘Charly’. ‘Break And Enter’ is much longer though, a real build up but with the same flavour, a typical Prodigy tune but with a bit more. On Jilted Generation we tried to steer away from ragga too much because that worked on the first album and was okay for that era, but things move on and you have to adapt.

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Full story behind Liam Howlett’s remix of Casanova is already on our Patreon

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A few years ago, Canyon Hill, one of our team members, recreated ‘Break & Enter’ from scratch in Ableton Live, using all the found samples. Check out his version and subscribe to his YouTube channel!

The Prodigy themselves released this revamped guitar version of ‘Break & Enter’ twice. The Electronic Punks VHS, released in the summer of 1995, featured videos from several of the group’s concerts, including the fresh show opener. However, the sound on this recording leaves much to be desired: for the VHS, it was recorded from the crowd. In the Electronic Punks setlist, the new mix was labeled as Break & Enter ’95. Perhaps the most epic and high-quality recording capturing this version of the track is the video from the Glastonbury festival, which was officially released only 10 years later, in 2005, on the DVD Their Law (The Singles 1990-2005) — it’s the only professional soundboard recording of Break & Enter ’95 that has been officially released by the band.

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To mark the 30th anniversary of the LP, the All Souvenirs team has recreated this version from scratch! It only lacks Jim Davies’ guitar — we hope to fix that some day 🙂

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A decade after the album’s release, during the ‘Their Law’ anniversary tour in 2005, Liam once again revamped ‘Break & Enter’, returning it to its role as the band’s live show opener, thereby referencing events from ten years prior. In 2008, this mix was even officially released under the title Break And Enter (2005 Live Edit): it appeared on the second CD of the More Music For The Jilted Generation reissue. Incidentally, at two British shows in 2022, in Manchester (July 19) and London (July 21), Liam used this version as a minute-long live filler.

In the next article, we’ll be publishing our exclusive interview with Pop Will Eat Itself — they recorded the basis for the legendary ‘Their Law’, later reworked by Liam for ‘Music for the Jilted Generation’ and becoming one of the band’s biggest hits. PWEI shared with us every detail about how the track was created…

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Headmasters: SIXSHOT, SPLIT
Additional thanks to: Canyon Hill

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