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On this day, 18 July 1994. electronic dance music band The Prodigy played the Cardiff Astoria venue on their Jilted tour.
The band had just released their second album Music for the Jilted Generation
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.
Formed in 1990 by record producer and songwriter Liam Howlett. The band's line-up has included MC and vocalist Maxim, dancer and vocalist Keith Flint (until his death in March 2019), dancer and live keyboardist Leeroy Thornhill (who left to pursue a solo career in 2000) and dancer and vocalist Sharky (1990–1991). Along with the Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim, the Prodigy are credited as pioneers of the breakbeat-influenced genre big beat, which achieved mainstream popularity in the 1990s. Howlett's rock-inspired drum rhythms infused with electronic rave music beats/breaks were combined with Maxim's omnipresent mystique, Thornhill's shuffle dancing style and Flint's modern punk appearance.
The Prodigy describe their style as "electronic punk," being the pioneers in this rhythm, with a punk conceptual expression in many of their albums accompanied by strong and groundbreaking rhythms.
