FEATURE:
Melt
Leftfield’s Leftism at Thirty
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PERHAPS not placed…
IN THIS PHOTO: Neil Barnes, left, and Paul Daley of Leftfield/PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Double/Camera Press (via The Guardian)
as highly as other classic albums from 1995 by critics, Leftfield’s amazing debut, Leftism, is still a hugely important release. An iconic Dance album, it contained collaborations with artists who were not connected with Dance – a left-field decision as it were! Among those collaborators was John Lydon and Toni Halliday from Curve. Although it is a Progressive House album, Leftism is a multi-genre masterpiece. Leftism was hailed and heralded by critics in 1995. The album was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 1995 but lost to Portishead's Dummy. Reaching number six in the U.K. upon its release and seen as a landmark Dance album in years since, Leftism still sounds fresh thirty years later. Released on 30th January, 1995, it is a classic that takes risk but ones that pay off. The album was re-released in 2017. I will get to a review for Leftism 22. I want to start off with a 2020 feature from The Quietus:
“Since their fo:rmation in 1989, Leftfield had slowly but surely set up the template for much of what was to follow on the dancefloor over the next decade. Be it their own material in the shape of ‘More Than I Know’ and ‘Not Forgotten’ – tracks that arguably moved on British house music in huge leaps and bounds – through to still stunning remixes for the likes of Stereo MCs (‘Step It Up’), React 2 Rhythm (‘Intoxication’) and Inner City (‘Hallelujah’), as well as David Bowie’s ‘Jump They Say’ among many others – Leftfield were defining the next wave of dance music. And with Leftism, they’d caused a seismic shift.
Much like Primal Scream’s Screamadelica, Leftism was a long time coming and an album heralded by a stream of landmark single releases before its eventual arrival. Though released in the opening overs of 1995, Leftism took its first indelible step three years earlier with the release of ‘Release The Pressure’. Featuring reggae singer Earl Sixteen, the 12”-only release marked a departure from the sound Leftfield had become known for. The bpms were reduced to create a more intense groove, while the bassline – certainly on the single’s ‘Rough Dub’ flip – introduced Leftfield’s burgeoning reggae infatuation.
Not that they were alone. Primal Scream had deployed dub dynamics across Screamadelica while The Sabres Of Paradise were reaching new levels of dread, echo and space on Haunted Dancehall, as were The Aloof. And of course there was The Orb, whose epic soundscapes blended those 70s hinterlands of dub, ambient washes and electronica, while soon to follow were Renegade Soundwave with The Next Chapter Of Dub. Yet for all that, none of them quite blended the mix of dub and house music to the same degree as Leftfield did.
Witness the album version of ‘Song Of Life’ for evidence. Whereas the original 12” single from 1992 leapt pretty much into the heart of the action, Leftism’s reading builds slowly and methodically with at least half of the song relying on dub dynamics to create a sense of tension screaming out for release. Here, Leftfield are more concerned about the journey than they are about the destination, but it’s an approach that reaps rich rewards.
Indeed, to listen to Leftism at a remove of a quarter of a century is to reframe the album from its original perception. Though widely regarded as the pinnacle of progressive house, the album had actually moved away from the form Leftfield had helped create. And perhaps most striking now is how the album works best when it’s banging the least. The sensual grooves of ‘Original’ feel more aligned to the sounds that were emanating from Bristol at the time. Elsewhere, ‘Melt’’s shimmering haze still evokes the moment when the sun begins to greet the dawn, as do the gentle undulations of closer ‘21st Century Poem’.
Which isn’t to deny the album’s banging credentials. Though ‘Space Shanty’ is undeniable straight-ahead fun, it pales next to the joy at the heart of ‘Afro-Left’, a heady and potent blend of African rhythms and driving beats and ‘Open Up’, featuring John Lydon – a man with serious form when comes to being in the right place at the right time – is easily a career highlight for both parties (there’s a good reason why PiL regularly include it in their live sets) But whereas the Full Vocal Mix of the original single is a full-on raver, here it takes an off-road detour into the space-dub explorations that beat at the heart of Leftism.
It’s not difficult to see why. Having revolutionised the dancefloor through a stream of infectious singles and remixes, with Leftism, Leftfield were already looking ahead. Their next area of conquest would be the live arena and that campaign would need an overhaul in sound and delivery. Along with Underworld, Orbital and The Prodigy, Leftfield were taking the party out of the clubs and into festivals. Forget the retrospective chat about Britpop in the mid-90s; it’s worth bearing in mind that the new generation of dance music held considerably more sway. The evidence is there in those Tribal Gathering line-ups and the rise of professionally organised dance events designed to circumnavigate the Criminal Justice Bill of 1994. Crucially, the proof is also there in live performances of staggering dimensions. No longer would electronic music face accusations of anonymity or a lack of personality.
Finally catching up with the live Leftfield experience during a particularly rain sodden Homelands festival at the Winchester Bowl in 2000 made up for missing them four years previously. The memory still lingers of several thousand damp ravers crammed into the Home Arena visibly taken aback when the bowel-quaking bass dropped from a colossal height. Those dub reggae influences had been tweaked, refined and ramped up to near absurd levels. But there was no denying that the effect on the gathered masses was genuinely profound. There was no way anybody was going to be standing still. And it all started with the alteration in sound and dynamics on Leftism, an album that’s far more diverse in identity and influence than was initially perceived”.
I want to bring in a review from The Student Playlist. A towering album from 1995 that has lived on and has this important legacy today, I know there will be a lot of new celebration for Leftism ahead of its thirtieth anniversary (30th January). I think I only heard the album a few years ago. Maybe the odd song connected with me in 1995, but I heard the entire album fairly recently. It definitely moved me:
“Avoiding the traps of many contemporaneous dance records of the mid-Nineties, which tended to suffer from a lack of variation and the imagined necessity for immediacy, Barnes and Daley decided to take a more subtle approach for much of their debut full-length statement, opting for explorations of texture over bursts of hedonism and novelty. If there’s a comparator or an equivalent to Leftism, it’s the try-everything experimentation of a band like The Clash circa London Calling, rather than anything in the immediate sphere of dance music. Not for nothing is Leftism’s front cover an image of a speaker cone framed by a jawbone.
There are guest vocalists on Leftism, something that would become a fixture of dance albums that sought a crossover audience (see The Chemical Brothers), but they don’t overpopulate the album and they dovetail into the needs of the music, subservient to it instead of using it as a platform for their own personalities. Singer Neil Cole, credited as ‘Djum-Djum’, delivers a rapid-fire string of vaguely African-sounding gibberish (apparently his own invented language) that serves to enhance the adrenaline rush of ‘Afro-Left’. The ribcage-shaking bass of ‘Original’, a soulful and trip-hop-influenced gem of a track that has a cinematic, worldly quality that other dance artists rarely achieved in the Nineties, is capped off with the gorgeous vocals of Curve’s Toni Halliday. The brilliance of Lydon’s contribution to the aforementioned ‘Open Up’ hardly needs to be stated, the wide-eyed malevolence of his “burn, Hollywood, burn… take down Tinseltown” incantations matching perfectly with the incendiary, skull-crushing house that Barnes and Daley conjure up.
Instead, by and large, the real core of Leftism is to be found in its instrumental deep cuts, where Barnes and Daley use huge sonic canvasses to explore emotion by way of texture. From the opening tones of first track ‘Release The Pressure’, whose notes dissolve blissfully and sound like a new dawn, the emphasis is primarily on vibes, not easy hooks or the more immediate gratification of high bpms. The hazy aura of ‘Melt’, whose vaporous horns sound the like the sonic equivalent of a mirage on the desert horizon, and the stunningly atmospheric ‘Song Of Life’, with its cavernous troughs of dub and general demeanour ofdark, druggy spookiness, are the most seductive of these.
It’s not until half an hour into the record, with the arrival of ‘Black Flute’, that the bpm is raised considerably, at least to the point where it could be considered anything like conventional ‘house’. Following the monumental epic ‘Space Shanty’, one of the undisputed high points of the decade in British dance music, Leftfield decide to lay off the onslaught and explore a rumbling hybrid of dub reggae and house with ‘Inspection (Check One)’, showing that unexpected flourishes of invention are just as impactful as keeping the tempo up. In this way, Leftfield continually play with their audience’s expectations throughout this seminal debut. They decide to end things on a low-key note, with the dignified anger of Mancunian poet Lemn Sissay set to a percussion-free, ambient piece on ‘21st Century Poem’.
The reception that greeted Leftism was little short of rapturous. Essentially, Leftism marked the point at which British dance music found a mainstream audience in its pure form. Sure, the likes of Screamadelica and Pills, Thrills And Bellyaches had been embraced by indie fans, but those albums were the works of predominantly guitar-based acts building bridges with dance culture, not the other way around. Q magazine, traditionally a pretty straight-down-the-middle rock publication, hailed it as “the first truly complete album experience to be created by house musicians and the first quintessentially British one”. It was nominated for the 1995 Mercury Music Prize, narrowly losing out to another groundbreaking British dance record in the shape of Portishead’s Dummy. To date, it has sold well over half a million copies in the UK”.
The penultimate review I want to highlight is this one from 2017. Leftism definitely made an impression in 1995 but, in a year that sported classic albums from the likes of Oasis, Garbage, Alanis Morissette, Radiohead, Björk, PJ Harvey, Pulp and Supergrass, people do not really rank Leftfield’s debut alongside them. It is one of the first true greats of 1995 to mark its thirtieth anniversary. If you have not heard the album before then please do so:
“Leftism was, in many ways, the absolute centrepoint of the 1990s, and represented the breaking of dance culture's second wave of mainstreaming. The first had come early in the decade with the likes of LFO, Altern-8, The Orb, Orbital and The Future Sound Of London proving that '90s electronic music was an album- and festival-friendly genre. In 1994, though, Underworld's Dubnobasswithmyheadman and The Prodigy's Music For The Jilted Generation went further. Rather than being electronic or rave records that crossed over, they were crossover records in themselves, built with big, generalist festival crowds in mind. In '95, Leftism sealed the deal: even amidst the backwards-looking guitar conservationism of Britpop, it was becoming normal for dance producers to sit at the mainstream music industry's top table. It was perfect timing for Leftfield. They'd built a huge store of goodwill for themselves at the start of the decade with bona fide club smashers that, for better or worse, set the template for progressive house. Tracks like "Not Forgotten" and "More Than I Know"—and their remixes for React 2 Rhythm, Inner City, Ultra Naté, Stereo MCs—laid down that steady pile-up of simple riffs that felt like a safety net beneath the ever-accelerating mania of hardcore. Prog would eventually become grossly overblown, but until late '92 it was all good fun. Leftfield didn't go that way, thankfully: through "Release The Pressure," "Song Of Life" and "Open Up" they kept what was charming about their original sound, and added drama without locking into the lazy formula others did. Leftism, then, really was bang in the middle of everything. And if that suggests "middle of the road," well, there was that, too.
It became the default soundtrack of every student-shared house, every between-bands bit of Glastonbury, and, increasingly, every dinner party. Listening back now, it still pumps. But it's a palatable pump, with enough hooks and vocals to work as well over pasta as in a field at 4 AM. Funnily enough, the tracks that have aged best are the ones that pump least: the sensual Orb-like ripples of "Melt" and "21st Century Poem," the trip-hop lope of "Original," the endearingly ham-fisted attempt to fuse jungle and trance on "Storm 3000," and the wonderfully mature peace-and-unity cheese of "Release The Pressure." The 4/4 tracks that make up the skeleton of the album sound more dated, but they were never bleeding edge anyway. The album sounds as much like a raver's comfort blanket as it ever did. For Leftism's remixes, Leftfield have done a smart thing in keeping the album's running order, remixing the whole experience of the album as much as the individual tracks. It starts out well. Adrian Sherwood is a genius pick for "Release The Pressure," scrambling an overfamiliar song with all his dub utensils. Likewise, Peverelist and Hodge couldn't be better for "Afro-Left": they retain all the deft parts and dubwise quality but turn its predictable '90s plod into a razor-sharp groove. Adesse Versions uses a deep understanding of older dance track tonality to subvert any sense of retroism, turning "Original" into a shuffling house beauty that keeps the original's spirit entirely intact. Though other remixes in the middle section update the production techniques, they don't really advance on the festival-pleasing 4/4 or big beat predictability of the originals. Skream and Zomby, rounding off the album, haven't turned in their best work. Zomby's contribution is more subdued than, say, his recent Hyperdub album, Ultra. Skream's take on "Open Up" is a shameless crowdpleaser. The remixed album, as a coherent listen, doesn't work as Leftism does. Though there's an uncanny excitement in hearing familiar motifs in new forms, the constant shift between production styles stymies the flow. It's a fascinating experiment in rewiring something so plugged into the collective unconscious, and there are some truly brilliant bits in it. But while Leftfield managed to be all things to all people almost by default, the remix album seems to be trying a little too hard to pull off the same trick”.
I am going to end with The Line of Best Fit. They provided their take on Leftism 22. An expanded edition of a golden album from 1995, we got to see Leftism in a new light. I will be interested to see what perspective people offer when Leftism gets its round of thirtieth anniversary kudos. It will introduce the album to more people and a whole new generation:
“Dance acts transferring their ability to thrill beyond one off 12”s to the long playing format was a relatively new thing, and a trick not yet mastered by many; only Underworld’s Dubnobasswithmyheadman, Orbital’s Brown Album, The Prodigy’s Music For The Jilted Generation and Fluke’s Techno Rose of Blighty had really pulled it off at the time, though each now enjoys 'classic album' status. While many played up the rock-y angle of Underworld, the soundtrack geekery of Orbital and nu-punk of The Prodigy, Leftfield proved to be the most purist of these acts, and Dubnobass... aside, this is the album that has aged best out of those it was lumped in with at the time.
Leftfield's live performances from that era now hold the same legendary status as those of My Bloody Valentine - volume was key, and as such it's no surprise that it's on the more aggressive tracks that Leftism excels. A tune such as "Afro-Left" still sounds like a year zero for electronic music; fusing African rhythms with trance riffs and a pounding techno beat had probably never been done prior to Leftism, and it still bangs with punk vigour. The furious futurism of "Space Shanty" will still manage to make you frantically gurn against your will, while the jungle-influenced beats of "Storm 3000" still prove a thrill even after all this time. The dubby beats and chillonic intro of "Song For Life" could only come from the 90s, plus it remains a mystery that the more dancefloor ready "Cut For Life" - only released on the vinyl version originally - isn't promoted to this reissue, as it’s a real highlight of the record. The slow paced dub-hop of the Toni Halliday (Curve)-featuring "Original" remains deep and menacing, and of course there's "Open Up" featuring John Lydon, the track which brought Leftfield their commercial cross over. It remains one of the weirdest ever top 20 hits and is absolutely the best song either party has ever been involved with.
Of course there are tunes here that do date the record, but they remain relevant for showing a different, subtler side to the band beyond their bang bang, club-based material. The spatial ambience of "Melt" gives the LP a much needed moment of moody soundtrackism, a route many went down when wanting to show off a mellower side, while "Inspection One"'s big beats evoke memories of stoned late night sessions playing Wipeout 2097 on PlayStation One.
Being such a similarly important part of British dance music history, you would have expected Leftism 22 to beafforded a similarly deluxe reissue package to the one Dubnobass... received. That album’s comprehensive reissue in the form of an exhaustive four CD set is not replicated here, thus making the package much more precise; you get the album, then you get the album remixed by current artists. Of those remixes, Maafi impressively taps into the dancehall elements of "Inspection One", Adrian Sherwood does that Adrian Sherwood thing to "Release The Pressure", fans of harder dance music will find much to love with Ben Sims techno retouch of "Black Flute" (which proves to be much more maximal than his usual material), Bodyjack twists "Song of Life" into big room minimal-tech which utilises the euphoric breakdown of the original to great effect, and Skream continues his journey into tuff tech-house with his impressive jacking touch up of "Open Up".
Let’s be frank here, every single copy of Leftism that was bought at the time is totally wrecked for a multitude of reasons, so a reissue of it is very much welcome. Once re-acquainting yourself with the album, those hazy memories attached to it trickle back, while the reasons why you loved it in the first place will smack you in the face as soon as that glorious first note of "Release The Pressure" booms from the speaker. It’s a wonderful thing, and its standing as one of the best albums of the 90’s remains undiminished”.
The stunning Leftism turns thirty on 30th January. A winter treat from the duo of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, they would follow Leftism with another phenomenal album: 1999’s Rhythm and Stealth. I think their debut is their finest release. Regarded by some as one of the first Dance albums released, it definitely inspired so many other acts. Take some time to play Leftism and let it…
OVERWHELM the senses.