Experience

The Prodigy’s debut will never not sound exhilarating and a little bit terrifying. A gateway LP for a generation, it helped soundtrack Britain\'s early ‘90s rave revolution and heralded UK dance music’s growing ambition. Suddenly, the genre no longer felt limited to gimmicky, flash-in-the-pan singles: *Experience* proved you could carefully weave monstrous hits into a cohesive album experience. And in Liam Howlett, the scene gained an impeccable figurehead: The classically trained pianist was young and commercially savvy without artistic compromise. His production here still feels audacious—almost *contemptuous*—and his music is loaded with menace as it pilots you to giddying highs (quite literally on “Out of Space”), then sends you crashing back to Earth.

One of the few noncompilation rave albums of any worth, Experience balances a supply of top-this siren whistles and chipmunk divas with Liam Howlett's surprising flair for constructing track after track of intense breakbeat techno.