Leftfield

À rebours

Music that includes sounds wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats.

No, this isn't an excerpt from a negative review of "Leftism". It's actually the legal definition assigned in 1994 to "rave music" by the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act. This piece of legislation, one of the most debated and contested in British history (thankfully repealed in 1998), was Parliament's firm response to a series of public order disturbances caused by electronic music festivals such as Bedlam, Spiral Tribe and, above all, the 1992 Castlemorton Common Festival. Illegal drugs, deafening volumes and antisocial behaviour led public opinion (fuelled by the post-Thatcher Conservative government) to brand rave culture and the free party scene as a scourge to be wiped out.

Life must surely have been hard for the British authorities, who had watched things spiral out of their control ever since the days of Madchester. From the birth of punk through to the explosion of Manchester's "alternative" culture in the mid-Eighties, the spread of MDMA, illegally organized parties in public spaces, outbreaks of violence and riots of every kind had become the norm. First punk '77, then post-punk, right up to the Second Summer of Love, had drilled into the public consciousness the idea that punk, acid house, reggae, dub and the like were musical genres directly tied to youth countercultures, in which the line between legal and illegal was distinctly blurred. The punk wave, however, gradually dissolved, retreating into niche status, while electronic music became the herald of the new generations. The result of this cultural misunderstanding was clear: rave music soon became associated with dub, UK house, acid house and breakbeat. These were branded as "aggravating" genres at gatherings and festivals, giving police the authority to forcibly clear sites in order to prevent and suppress alternative culture and its lifestyle. Protests from the electronic music world were swift: "Anti" by Autechre was a jab at the new law, with beats that were never identical to one another (they also jokingly suggested bringing a lawyer and a musicologist along to their DJ sets). Orbital named one of their mixes "Criminal Justice Bill?" (essentially a silent track).

Despite the protests, the public debate and the continuation of the free party movement around the world, the rave movement did indeed begin a slow decline. By the mid-Nineties, acid house music was increasingly diluted and removed from its post-punk roots. What was taking shape was a realignment of a musical current alternative to the mainstream, while electronic music pushed into new, uncharted territory such as ambient-techno and trip-hop. "Leftism", on the other hand, was a defiant act of indifference towards everyone and everything.

God Save the Dj

Paul Daley and Neil Barnes met during the Second Summer of Love, playing at various underground venues around London in 1989. Of the two, Paul Daley was the one with the greater track record. A member of The Rivals, a punk outfit following in the footsteps of the Clash, he went on to found an experimental project called A Man Called Adam. AMCA aimed to push the ideas of Primal Scream and Brand New Heavies a step further, fusing acid house with acid jazz. It was an excellent idea, and the early experiments produced warm, spacious sounds, but Daley soon fell out with the project's other two founders, Steve Jones and Sally Rodgers, leaving before the first record was even released. Even so, Paul had already started mulling something over: shaped by the AMCA experience, the idea of an acid house record more forceful than anything else out there was already taking root in his mind; all that was missing was the right collaborator and a bit of motivation.

The first piece fell into place when he met Neil Barnes, the true energetic face of Leftfield, eccentric and just club-obsessed enough without losing himself in excessive experimentalism. It was Neil who wasted no time recording the first mix credited to Leftfield, "Not Forgotten", in 1990. The group's signature sound was already taking its first steps. A sitar sample stood out over a warehouse-style rhythm, sitting halfway between the genre's American origins and the Balearic House trends of the time. The track was by no means a hit. In fact, it had no distribution at all beyond the live sets where Neil and Paul were behind the decks. Some of Neil's tracks, however, made their way onto club compilations, catching the attention of Mixmag, which described his creations as "progressive house" (one of the earliest uses of the term).

What really changed the game was an encounter with an unexpected figure in our story: John Lydon. The historic icon of the Sex Pistols had emerged unscathed from the collapse of the first punk wave thanks to his extraordinary work with Public Image Ltd, and, according to Neil Barnes himself, by the turn of the Nineties he had become an avid follower of the British underground electronic scene. Neil and Lydon spent enough time together to become good friends, bonded by their shared love of reggae music, until the producer blurted out "I've got this mad idea" and dragged Lydon into the studio to record Leftfield's first hit, "Open Up".

A driving, dark electro-punk backbone was the track's main ingredient, while Lydon's voice, with its sharp, chant-like tone, served as an ethnic, Eastern-tinged sonic element. "What we'd all always wanted to hear from John Lydon", wrote NME — a mash-up of PIL's raw sound with the energy of house rhythms. "Burn, burn," the ex-Sex Pistol says in the lyrics (which he co-wrote), aimed squarely at Hollywood. The singer had in fact been turned down as an actor by several American film production companies; "Open Up" was his cry of frustration and revenge.

The track climbed the UK charts, peaking at number thirteen on the UK Singles Chart, giving the duo a wave of visibility. This exposure was skillfully used to bring another single to the public's attention, one destined for even greater success: "Original". This track, too, was the result of a collaboration, this time with a female voice. Electronic music's reigning vocalist queen, Toni Halliday, was chosen to perform the song, but its creation was anything but straightforward. Paul and Neil gave Curve's dreamy voice a lengthy dark punk track to sing over. Once the recording was finished, the two producers pulled out the vocal tape and built around it a disturbing electronic backing, suspended somewhere between acid house and trip-hop.

"Original" was also aired during a BBC Radio 1 show, leaving the radio staff stunned: "But it's only two chords" they complained to Neil and Paul from the control room, but that didn't matter, because the record was starting to stand out. Confirmation came with the commercial success of "Original", which even made it onto Top of the Pops in 1995.

Release the Pressure

A less fortunate fate befell the single "Release the Pressure", which, due to a legal dispute, remained unreleased until 1996, when it was finally issued in a slightly modified version. Still, every cloud has a silver lining. The delayed release of "Release the Pressure" allowed it a warmer reception from the public and critics, already primed by the previous singles. A sidereal expanse with echoing percussion opens the track. A shamanic cry announces "I've got to stand and fight/ In this creation/ Vanity I know/ Can't guide I alone/ I'm searching to find/ A love that lasts all time/ I've just got to find/ Peace and unity". A statement of intent that would make "Release the Pressure" a fitting opening track for the album. The splendid intro, however, only serves as a springboard for the dub-house rhythm that makes the track one of the duo's most memorable. Acidic chirps, dissonant Roland TB-303 lines, and near-industrial percussion turn the stride into an all-out outburst against British society, capped off with the final assertion: "Why your laws have left me/ Out of the king and out of the rain/ Transalt movement is takin' over/ Am I inferior?/ You are!".

Upon its final release in January 1995, "Leftism" contended for the Mercury Music Prize against Portishead (losing out at the nomination stage), with every right to stand out as one of the most innovative records of the year. The album's musical spectrum, in fact, wasn't limited to acid- and dub-flavoured house music alone; Neil Barnes and Paul Daley drew on many more genres than that, making the record's sonic palette wonderfully varied from track to track.

While Adrian Sherwood-style dub from his On U Sound days and reggae roots remain the backbone driving the rhythms of "Song of Life", "Inspection (Check One)" and, above all, the tribal dance of "Afro-Left", what really strikes is the duo's masterful ability to turn reggae-derived musical scenarios into explosive dancefloor cuts, playing with overlapping loops and tempo shifts. "Afro-Left" itself is a striking example: opening with MC Djum Djum's vocal chant, it evolves into a powerful techno track, following a blueprint that would underpin much of Prodigy's later work.

But "Leftism" isn't just electro-world. Just get to "Storm 3000" to realise that the duo's insights would go on to become the norm for the entire breakbeat movement that followed, of which they're often counted among the founders. The crossing of jungle rhythms with hefty basslines is also the sine qua non of the trance surges in "Space Shanty".

The album's softer side is represented by the sampling of Art of Noise's "Ransom on the Sand", used as the framework for the smoothed-out beat of "Melt", and by the closing meditation of "21st Century Poem", which intones gravely, asking: "How many dreams tells lies, till we rise? / How many visions will they burn, till we learn?", letting the words dissolve into an ambient sunset, a fitting way to bring "Leftism" full circle.

Even back then, as now, the intent behind Leftfield's debut work is fairly clear: a release of the pressure (to quote the band themselves) built up over more than a decade of repression of Britain's alternative cultures at the hands of ageing conservative governments. An outlet for all those genres branded as "counterculture", as "harmful to public order", as "characterised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats". "Leftism" arrived late to the electronic music scene: Orbital's "Green Album" had already been around for a while; Prodigy too had already timidly revealed themselves to the world, laying the groundwork for the Big Beat genre; "Papua New Guinea" by The Future Sound of London had already torn up the charts, and Underworld were in the midst of morphing from electronic pop-rock into techno-trance.

What set this record apart from everything else on the scene was its intent: to go against the grain ("anti-corporate", as Paul Daley put it). They didn't want to land in the charts; they wanted to give voice to the swan song of rave culture and to what it had meant for a generation of British youth.

Ride the wave of great music

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01/07/2018