Leftfield - Leftism

Each month we take a look at a classic track or album and discuss it from a music production perspective, examining any sonic innovations that took place during its recording. This month we investigate Leftfield's 'Leftism'.

Leftism holds a special place in the history of dance music. Released in 1995, it was far from the first album that the genre produced; the likes of Underworld and the Prodigy had already brought out dance music LPs. However, it was the record that really woke people up to the dizzying potential that this new style of music had when allowed room to breathe over the course of a full album.

Leftfield, a duo comprised of Neil Barnes and Paul Daley, were the first people to prove that dance music could truly work across an album in the traditional sense; they created a bewilderingly eclectic set of songs that nonetheless worked as a coherent whole. It sounded like a complete work, not just a set of 12' singles.

The album took in dub, house, ambient, trance and world music and featured a similarly disparate set of guest vocalists. Leftfield took a thoroughly modern approach to song production, almost 'remixing' their own tracks at times as they searched for the right sound. In an interview with the Guardian, Barnes explained that Toni Halliday (of the band, Curve) was a huge fan of their track 'Open Up', a collaboration with John Lydon. She approached them about working together: 'We put together a dark punk backing track and she sang over it. Then we completely rebuilt the backing track and called the result Original. We did that with everybody, tricking them really.' 

'Open Up' itself had undergone similar treatment. Barnes again; 'When [Lydon] came in and did the vocal, we realised we had to get the rest of the backing track up to the standard of the lyric. His vocal performance was so incredible, we felt we needed to match it. We changed the bassline radically and added a lot more drums.' Leftfield were really at the vanguard of production at this point; part of the first wave of producers to truly use the studio as a compositional tool.

Their legacy is clear, and Daley summed it up succinctly when talking to the BBC recently, describing their musical descendants as 'Anyone who's thought, 'I'm going to buy some decks, synths, samplers and make a record' since 1989.' He goes on, 'By no means are Leftfield wholly responsible - but we were part of a forward-thinking global musical movement that exploded at the end of the 20th Century and turned pop culture on its head.'