Music

Looking Back

Leftfield’s game-changing debut Leftism turns 30

Praised by critics and fans alike, Leftism celebrates three decades as one of the UK’s greatest ever dance albums…


It’s just turned 1995 in the UK. John Major is in power, and kids are playing with the coveted Mighty Morphin Power Ranger figurines they got for Christmas. While the world mourns the loss of Kurt Cobain, alternative music still rules the airwaves, with new genres and sub-cultures bubbling away in non-London pockets. Look to the south west and you’d become immersed in the smoky-dark beat mulch of trip-hop. Look north: it’s straight parkas and Pulp. Musically, the air was fizzing as the year turned, and – despite ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ by the Rednex stealing the first new UK No.1 spot, oh the lols – it felt like every alt scene, from the bowl-cut Britpop boys to the Vedder-worshipping grungers, had something to shout about. 

And what about dance music, I hear you ask? Well, pull up a chair.

Turns out 1994 had been quite an eventful year for the genre, with Orbital’s electric (and quite astonishing) Glastonbury appearance being praised for introducing a whole new ‘dance music is shit’ audience to the scene. Cream and Café Mambo launched in Ibiza, and The Prodigy released Music For The Jilted Generation allegedly in response to the corruption (and mainstreaming) of UK rave culture – alternatively, the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act became law in 1994 which clamped down on underground raves with severe penalties for trespassing, unauthorised camping and raving. This Act sparked protests up and down the country, with over 150,000 taking to the streets throughout the year in response to the draconian measures being taken against the dance community. In legislation, rave music was described as: “wholly or predominantly categorised by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats”, and with three-month prison sentences and hefty fines being levelled at those within a mile radius of an underground rave – the stakes for simply losing oneself in a field, with a bunch of people that wanted to feel the same way, were high. 

Despite all the shade being thrown at it, however, dance music was absolutely thriving, and like the other musical leanings of the time, evolving at a rate of knots.

Which brings us back into the fold of January 1995. John Major is still Prime Minister, ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ is still, regrettably, No.1 in the charts, and a revolutionary album debut is about to add an extra level of spiciness to dance floors across the globe.

Leftfield - Release The Pressure

Formed in 1989, duo Neil Barnes and Paul Daley had already worked together on tracks ‘Not Forgotten’ and ‘More Than I Know’ before heading into the studio as Leftfield to work on their debut album, Leftism.

“Paul Daley and I were both playing bongos in a London club called Fred’s. But Paul was also in a band and they had a record deal, so he was far ahead of me,” Neil Barnes told The Guardian in a 2017 interview about the making of Leftism. “Then I nicked my brother’s keyboard, got a loan to buy a sampler, and made a track called ‘Not Forgotten’. Paul did a remix and, before we knew it, we were in the studio together.”

Featuring a mix of reworked and new tracks, Leftism was born from a desire to, according to Leftfield: “make an album of songs that would work in a club environment, which nobody had done before.” 

Raw, accomplished, aggressive, and pivotal in its fusion of genres such as techno, dub, tribal and trance, Leftism used non-traditional dance vocalists on various tracks – the most recognisable being John Lydon’s distinctively vicious cadence on ‘Open Up’. Ranting and snarling about his distaste for Hollywood, Lydon brings a sense of boiled piss and revolution to this menacing trance banger. Needless to say, it’s the Leftfield track that punches its way into any post-3am festival set, when you’re shivering/dancing/shuffling/raving in a crowd while the sun creeps up behind you (and you have no idea where your tent is).

Leftfield - Open Up

Track ‘Original’ also featured Toni Halliday of the group Curve, of whom Barnes was a fan. Cosmic with dubby elements, Halliday’s vocal is indicative of that spoken 90s style – detached, yet sensual in its cooler-than-thou aloofness. 

Leftism was half sampled and half live,” Paul Daley says in the aforementioned interview. “Some of it was just sounds we made, bent up in the samplers. For ‘Afro Left’, we got a guy in to play a berimbau, a single-string percussion instrument. Everything felt underground. I was quite anti-corporate and didn’t want to do Top Of The Pops. But in the end we played ‘Original’ between Simple Minds and Duran Duran. I don’t think people knew what to make of us.” 

Leftfield - Original

Leftism was and still remains a critical and commercial hit. In the year of its release it was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize, losing out to another insanely influential dance debut, Dummy by Portishead. Plus, that cover? Even though this writer was only 14 when the album came out, she distinctly remembers the ‘cool lads’ in her hometown sporting tees with that iconic speaker/jawbone image.

“It’s hard to overestimate the significance of Leftism, roundly acknowledged upon its release in 1995 as the first truly complete album experience to be created by house musicians and the first quintessentially British one,” said Q magazine when commenting on the album’s 2000 reissue. High praise indeed. 

Most importantly, Leftism captured a mood. At a time when dance music was being vilified and dampened by everything from heavy-handed law enforcement to media scapegoating, it stands side by side with a handful of other pivotal dance albums that defined a decade. Plus, it still sounds momentous when played really f*cking loud –  in your bedroom, or live, surrounded by hundreds of like-minded souls trying to reach that euphoric dance echelon as the lasers pulse around you. Incredible stuff.


Leftfield play Bearded Theory festival in May, before their headline shows at O2 Academy Brixton and Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom. Find tickets here