Leftfield - 'Leftism'
No. 15 in our Top 100 Electronica Albums of the 1990s
“Music’s always been the most important thing to us, we don’t do anything else but make music…I used to be completely obsessed by it — music’s like a drug.” — Paul Daley, “No Sound System Is Safe,” Mixmag, February 1995
Leftfield‘s Leftism is THE rave album of the 1990s, voted by many as the best dance album of all time. In crude terms, it’s about speakers — loud and clear. That’s not just a quick take but is an irrefutable truth. Neil Barnes and Paul Daley’s debut longplayer is an enduring manifesto about the unique superpower of electronic music pumped through big, high-performance audio systems.
“Hit in the chest and the gut,” Daley once told Mixmag of their bass ethos, tying their identity back to the dance floor and the electric power that pumped through speaker cables and cones. “When me and Neil were at warehouse parties all the systems were like that, so we took that as a marker. We come from a world where bass was the most powerful thing and everything followed on from it.”
At Leftfield’s very first live show in Amsterdam, the Dutch police almost arrested the band and their soundman for pumping the volume to near illegal levels. At the Brixton Academy theatre in London, their sound system caused dust and plaster to fall from the ceiling, effectively banning them from the venue. Wearing that infamy proudly, Leftism‘s artwork framed a speaker in shark jaws; photos inside the album sleeve showed Daley and Barnes sitting before a giant stack of bass bins and tweeters, audiophiles bringing major firepower to the 20th century powwow.
“The record sleeve was partly my idea,” Daley explained to Muzik magazine. “It was an attempt at surrealism! It's a sculpture of a shark's jaws, which we photographed, and fed into a computer. We wanted to get away from all that techno computer imagery. The shark's jaws were meant to be a bit threatening, a bit disturbing. Like, if you put your head into the speaker, the shark's jaws might bite you. A lot of people actually thought it was quite sexy.” Which is to say, sharks and bass hit a primal place.
But Leftfield weren’t just bass savants. They perceived deep bass as the equal player in music’s overall dynamism. “If there’s too much bass, the groove becomes too wide and the needle pops out,” Barnes would explain to Mixmag in a little tutorial about bass and vinyl production. “You have a trade-off of either compressing something and making it really loud or having the sound you want. But if you turn it up, your bass gets louder and washier and the grooves basically start to collide. Technically there’s no way round it.” Carving out caves of sub-bass, Leftfield knew all the ins and outs.
Barnes, an old mate of the Sex Pistol’s John Lydon and an ex-teacher, initially teamed up with Daley, a friend who drummed for the acid jazz group A Man Called Adam, on a remix of his single ‘Not Forgotten’ — Barnes originally penned the progressive house anthem alone, its evocative call-and-response melodies reminiscent of crying geese greeting the morning sun and its “What’s wrong with these people?” voice sample taken from the movie Mississippi Burning. But the duo’s ‘Hard Hands’ remix of the single redrew the template of UK dance music overnight, its rumbling bass and ballistic ragga breaks echoing over the underground — “progressive house.”*
In February, 1995, Leftield were on the cover of Mixmag, Barnes behind speaker stacks and Daley kneeling down in front, exhaling smoke from his two nostrils like a bull, a blunt in his fingers. “No Sound System Is Safe,” it declared. The journalist Frank Tope caught them right before everything would change. The two recounted how they first met as live drummers at the Sandals’ acid jazz club night in Soho, London, where the two post-punkers hit it off. About two years later, when Daley was drumming for A Man Called Adam in a studio down the hall, he reunited with Barnes who was working on ‘Not Forgotten,’ which Barnes described as the “sound of 15 years of frustration coming out in one record.” Daley soon heard the legendary DJ Andrew Weatherall playing it out: “I went to Ibiza and heard Weatherall playing it in Ku” — the “world’s largest night club,” founded in 1979 — he told Tope. “I thought it sounded wicked, totally different to anything else around at the time.”
It’s hard to believe that ‘Not Forgotten’ came out in 1990. Daley had done an edit called ‘Fateh’s On The Case’ that accentuated the Fateh Ali Khan vocal sample on the original song, but when Daley returned to London from Ibiza that summer, that’s when Barnes asked him to work on the ‘Hard Hands’ remix, named after the ‘60s conga jazz hit of the same name and a tribute to salsa percussion great Ray Barretto. Released as a double side to Barnes’ second single, ‘More Than I Know,’ the ‘Not Forgotten (Hard Hands)’ mix took his nascent melodic instincts — Barnes’s knack for hooky piano vamps earned him a memorable role on the Sandals’ ‘Nothing’ classic — and reimagined it as a taut, disorienting and at times frenetic fever dream of dark incandescent contrasts and echo-distant bird cries.
It was intense and trippy yet warm and deeply human. “We left Paul in a room on his own,” Barnes told Tope, reminiscing with a grin, “and he re-edited the whole thing on old fashioned quarter-inch tape. The whole room was full of these cut-up pieces of tape he stuck back together.” While Barnes had initially collaborated with another ACMA alum, Matt Clark, to help engineer and co-produce ‘Not Forgotten,’ Daley realized an entirely new “progressive” dream and Leftfield theme — it was the combination of intense percussion with shattering bass that ran in between.
“The end result was revolutionary, a timeless dance classic,” wrote Tope, “driven by stuttering edits, spin backs, rollickingly funky percussion, breakdowns that opened up like bottomless crevices and gated sound effects that took an already good tune off into hyperspace. ‘And Leftfield,’ Paul intones sonorously, ‘…was born.’” It’s easy to forget just how revolutionary it was, for it intensified the drums at the heart of the revolution of rave, the combination of Daley and Barnes progressing the power, grammar and glimmer of acid house deep from within electronica’s DNA.
“It’s a compulsion that, in the four years since…has seen them become the single most influential production team working in British dance music,” wrote Tope — his reporting recording for history the Leftfield phenomenon — “opening up a generation of DJs and producers to the potential of dub and tribal percussion and inadvertently creating the bass-bouncing, bongo-powered monster that was progressive house along the way.” And that progression ping-ponged across the Atlantic to America — from New York City to California — where Urb magazine received its underground message.
“When Neil and I started making our music, we thought it was our own thing,” Daley told Urb magazine’s Lily Moayeri. “People — especially in England — like to put a label on things.” To which Barnes continued the theme. “We just saw it as something we did a few years ago,” he said. “As a term it’s stupid, isn’t it? Progressive house to describe a movement, it doesn’t make sense. The same house would probably be the best way to describe it.” For two former punks, it was indeed ironic, given that punk artists long maligned “progressive rock” or any music that risked becoming overwrought.
Of course, that was the magic trick of electronic music, pushing the boundaries, pretentiously or authentically. And how one styled their music could easily fall into many sides of a humanistic spectrum. What caught fire had to have a special mix of energy, flair, erudition, innovation, and nerve — taste then is what Leftfield was really more interested in, bringing something different and also obvious to the conversation. “The dub style is something we find quite easy to do,” Barnes noted. “It’s been such a strong part of my life ‘cause reggae’s so influential in London and has been for the last twenty years.” This time, Daley picked up and broke down the theme. “There is a lot of diversity of music in London. You can go to any club any night of the week and listen to something different,” he said, painting a picture of a city in peak hybridization.
Dub was the first “technological” music, hands down. And Leftfield were a very British interpretation of its mystical and global tactility, right down to their hard hands on the drum. In many ways, dub was the mentality that birthed “progressive house.” It was dub’s electromagnetic warmth and warp, along with its holy devotion to bass and rhythm, that was behind the Leftfield sound and its reception. In 1991, they released remixes of ‘More Than I Know’ as well, including the spaced out ambient dub of the ‘More Mix,’ floating and drifting in a river of bass with the same poignant touch that Barnes tapped on ‘Not Forgotten’ once again setting the tone. Except this time, slightly shifted with Daley’s soulful dramatic groove tuned to the dance floor.
That same year they would do their first remix as a team for another artist — ‘Intoxication’ by React 2 Rhythm. Their ‘Dubfield’ remix marked a new era in global house music, Guerrilla Records acting as the perfect platform for what Tope termed the “trancefloor.” The word “trance” was buzzing all about in 1991 as the heady, trippy grooves of UK dance music rose to a more elevated register. It was the year of Future Sound of London’s ‘Papua New Guinea,’ which sent a thunderbolt across the London underground. And Leftfield’s ‘Dubfield’ mix helped unlock the dream trance that was catalyzing raves into an ever more expansive proposition, from the full moon beach parties in Goa, India, to the full moon raves in the hills and deserts of California.
‘Intoxication (Dubfield Mix)’ — “Boom! Boom!” — took what ‘Not Forgotten (Hard Hands)’ started, with its pulverizing bass and rattling drums, and pushed the Leftfield template forward into moments of deep drama. Their name caught up in a legal battle with their first home label, Outer Rhythm, Barnes and Daley used the remix arena to innovate and stamp their sound in the underground. At the song’s two and a half minute mark, they drop out the drums and let a skittering gated synth-line cool, caress, and arrest — strings flooding the zone, the beat echoing up and down, “intoxication,’ says a voice. For the first rave generation, it was time to know.**
In 1992, the duo upped the dub with their Release the Pressure single and the companion Release the Dubs — six tracks in all of dub techno London style, with intense stabbing synths and strings, gut-pounding bass and drums, echoing piano, growling horns blaring in the murk, reggae singer Earl Sixteen intoning, “I got to stand and fight!” and “Lift off!” Leftfield would re-release ‘Release the Pressure’ in 1995 with four new mixes, in addition to the Leftism album version, every one of them different — versions, “dubs” — echoes of each other, echoes of the one deeper, perfection an elusive yet delicious game, pulling them deeper into the frame.
Which brought them to three more critical statements — their own ‘Song of Life’ in 1992, ‘Open Up’ in 1993, and their razing remix of Renegade Soundwave’s ‘Renegade Soundwave’ in 1994. Each year they progressed deeper and deeper into a sound that would bring the values of the underground closer to the overground. The original mix of ‘Song of Life’ began with birdsong before its synth-trance smeared and bounced across and over aquatic drums, launching into a dubby, driving groove — thumping, scratching, ricocheting — “Life!” — with angelic choir from the traditional Bulgarian song ‘Oi Maro’ rising up and above, marking it as one of London’s peak anthems.
Like ‘Papua New Guinea,’ Jam & Spoon’s ‘Stella,’ Orbital’s ‘Halcyon,’ or Moby’s ‘Go,’ Leftfield’s ‘Song of Life’ was ubiquitous and spun in various forms, including its echoey chugging ‘Dub of Life’ mix, its trip-hoppy ‘Fanfare of Life’ mix, and Underworld’s two wild reinterpretations, the techno warp of their ‘Steppin’ Razor’ mix, and their now legendary ambient dub symphony, the ‘Lemon Interupt’ mix, astounding in its own musical tricks; two great artists taking the teachings of dub deep into our techno tomorrow; the DJs Sasha and John Digweed using it to kick off their epic 3-disc Renaissance: The Mix Collection, 1994, setting the stage for Leftfield’s triumph.
By the time Leftism was hitting DJ decks, Barnes and Daley were at the vanguard of Britain’s mid-’90s techno surge. The album single ‘Song of Life’ is Leftism in miniature. It hacks through the electronic night-scape, first languishing to dubbed-out beats and haunting vocals before hurtling into a quickening pulse of dance floor ecstasy that flies and flies. ‘Inspection (Check One)’ still reigns as the hardest, baddest reggae breaks track of all time, ploughing the cranium at 33 RPMs but slamming the hills at a -8, switched-up to 45 RPMs on the turntables. The bass holds up. It even fattens.
One of the first techno supergroups to successfully marry guest vocalists with electronica, Leftfield’s Leftism features Earl Sixteen on the uplifting ‘Release the Pressure’ and Curve’s Toni Halliday on ‘Original’ — with a remix single that features another 33/45 RPM breakbeat scorcher with ‘Original Jam.’ Neil Cole as “Djum Djum” wigs out with African jibberish and twanging berimbau riffs, on the driving ‘Afro-Left’ — another remix single featuring the mighty ‘Afro-Ride,’ ‘Afro-Sol’ and ‘Afro-Central,’ watery and sun-glinting, a surf and a dune of groove, flashes of Africa in the future.
Leftfield’s most successful track ‘Open Up,’ featuring the “burn, Hollywood, burn!” wailings of Lydon, would reach #13 on the single charts, helping push the album to #3 in the UK album charts. “It was gutsy, spunky and energetic; everything that punk had been and which the rock press largely accused dance music of lacking,” wrote music critic Peter Buckley. “It was the biggest two-fingered salute dance music had yet administered.” And it was critical in warming up America to the electronic wave growing across the pond — and a key rush in the millennial cult film Hackers.
But the punk attitude also masked a softer, more sensitive side to Leftfield. The ambient dub of ‘Melt’ calls to mind the saxophonic romanticism of Vangelis, dipping the listener in an ocean brimming high as the clouds. And closer ’21st Century Poem,’ featuring the rhyming lyricism of poet Lemn Sissay, wears its rave heart on its sleeve —a call to conscience for every would-be global idealist awakened on the ’90s dance floor. “How many bridges can they burn, till we turn?” Sissay entreats. “How many lives can they take, till we break? How many dreams terrorized, till we rise?”
Other album tracks plied this moodier, even melancholy territory, the shadow of Britain’s Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 — which more or less outlawed “repetitive beats” at free parties or public gatherings — hanging heavy over London’s rave generation. The song ‘Black Flute’ defies with its distortion swing; ‘Space Shanty’ marches with a sci-fi tribal stomp, as if it was leading ravers to a battle of the planets as much as the music of the spheres — twirling, smashing, slamming, lightning — while ‘Storm 3000’ crackles and ruptures with its drum ‘n’ bass apocalypse.
All three would be boldly deconstructed and reimagined on Leftfield’s live album comeback, 2011’s Tourism, a brilliant tour de force and reminder of just how brightly their music can burn. That incendiary fire went back to Barnes and Daley’s ‘70s and ‘80s journey before rave and before they came together as one. Barnes was from Islington, in London, where soul, punk, reggae and then electro blew his mind. All music’s diversity was at his doorstep. Spandau Ballet were his classmates. He frequented soul clubs like Global Village and blues parties in Ladbroke Grove, Jamaican roots reggae and dub reigning hard, then stumbling upon hip hop.
“There was a big geezer slapping records on the deck and mixing them, while this machine played over the top,” Barnes told Tope, recounting how he saw hip hop and electro pioneers Afrika Bambaata and the Soulsonic Force in London in 1983, the first time he saw a drum machine being used with a sense of righteous anger. “I went up to one of them afterwards and asked him what it was — it was a Linn Drum — and I remember thinking I had to have one, but that I’d never be able to afford it.”
Of course, the Linn Drum was just the beginning of it. Daley grew up in Margate, a tipping point at the tip of the southeastern jut of England, about an hour drive east from London and under two hours by train back to London. From Margate, one could have watched the Windrush generation sailing into England from the islands and little colonies of the crumbling British Empire, the Afro-Caribbean diaspora accelerating its immense influence on the trajectory of Western music, from soul to even punk.***
“There was a massive club scene in Margate,” Daley recalled to Tope, describing the seaside town’s gritty and Bank Holiday club scene, where a young Daley checked out the funk venue Hades, and tripped out on London clubbers and transvestites walking along the seafront. “There were punk venues next door to soul clubs,” he said. “It got me into music at an early age: when everyone else was listening to the Top 40, I was going out, listening to Lonnie Liston Smith and coming home to listen to The Clash.”
Another key connection point was Lydon’s post-punk band Public Image Limited, particularly their First Edition and Metal Box output, which combined dub with punk with progressive rock with disco with krautrock. So subsumed by his Sex Pistols fame, Lydon was a chameleonic force of nature who would finally collide with ‘90s ravers by way of ‘Open Up’: “I’d known John since I was 19,” Barnes explained to Tope. “We had a mutual friend who took me round to where he lived. He was a right cunt, even worse than he is now, he completely took the piss out of me. But he was a total fucking hero. I mean, how could he not be? We’d wanted to do a track with him for about two years, but it took all that time to get him to commit to doing it and to get the track good enough.” Contrary to rock press assumptions, it didn’t take a lot of convincing.
As Lydon’s Public Image Limited work demonstrated to anyone paying attention, a wailer extraordinaire could thrive in the waves and surges of dance music. The writer Kris Needs, old friends with Lydon and a pal of The Orb’s Alex Paterson, won the inside line on its generation. In the November 1993 issue of New Musical Express, Needs got the collaboration’s background, starting with an encounter with Lydon at a June 1992 show at the Brixton Academy by The Orb, where Lydon’s Public Image Limited band mate, bassist Jah Wobble, performed ‘Blue Room’ with his new ambient dub mates.
Leftfield weren’t there perhaps, but Needs made the connection from one dub generation and post-punk wave to the next. In fact, Lydon was listening to Leftfield, dropping their name in a TV interview in America, where he lived. In May 1992, he met up with Leftfield at their studio, where Daley spun him some choice dance tunes, like Underworld’s buzzing remix of Björk’s ‘Human Behaviour,’ Hardfloor’s acid explosion ‘Hardtrance Acperience,’ and WestBam’s monster breakbeat strut, ‘Alarm Clock.’ Nervous but inspired, Lydon delivered the stuff and then some, opening it up.
The power of the human voice is undeniable. While it was eschewed by many producers at the break of rave’s techno dawn — though even in the early days of Cybotron and Juan Atkins, vocals were core to the mix — Leftfield were part of a new wave unafraid to use the voice and its charms. And Lydon was unlike any other singer, snarling and aggressive, yet surprisingly vulnerable and almost desperate too. “You lied, you faked, you cheated, you changed the stakes,” he sings on ‘Open Up.’ “Tragedy or comedy, probably publicity…Now open up, make room for me!”
Time flowed in both directions for Leftfield. But the undercurrent — their uncompromising commitment to experimentation and perfection — was always pulsing and flowing under yet over — like the heartbeat of a giant. ‘Open Up’ was recorded about one year after the L.A. Riots of 1992, but even so, its music video, which could have been huge, was banned by MTV, its timed rhythmic cuts of old black and white Hollywood films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Busby Berkeley dancers, with atomic bomb newsreels and burning buildings, was an irreverent send-up of the global cultural establishment.****
The year before Leftism was released, however, Leftfield showed no signs of wanting to play by the rules just for the sake of publicity. With the imprimatur of Mute’s Daniel Miller, one of the UK’s original electro-punk warriors, they remixed the jangling dub electro of Renegade Soundwave’s ‘Renegade Soundwave’ — a rare pop hit for the industrial dub rock band. Leftfield’s version though seemed to huff the fumes of popular music’s funereal bonfire, whirling in its firestorm — “House is shaking! Vibrating!” — firing on all cylinders, a doom train ready to burn, London, burn.
The Chemical Brothers, influenced by Renegade Soundwave, would include the Leftfield remix as the penultimate track in their manifesto breakbeat DJ mix, Brit Hop & Amyl House, in 1996. But it was another remix that in many ways encapsulates the full potential of Leftfield. The same year they remixed ‘Renegade Soundwave,’ 1994, they also remixed the Australian and Aboriginal music of Yothu Yindi — the spiritual and beautiful ‘Timeless Land.’ Their ‘Bengga Club Mix’ is a study in respect and a kind-hearted intellect. Taking the original and unchanging its stirring lyrics, they whip a dream-wind of ancient yet young voices calling the world to greater purpose.
“I feel the spirit / Of the great sisters / Calling on me to sing / This is the learning,” sings Mandawuy Yunupingu. “Of the great story / I'll tell you about this place / From the edge of the mountains / Fly down the valley / Down where the Snowy River flows / Follow the water / Down to the ocean / Bring back the memory!” It still gives chills and warmth of the human heart from one tribe to another: remember, peace, remember. Its trance of didgeridoo breaths and red rock wails, the low whine of the machine, boomeranging from the past to the future to today, its high melody soars, sings.
The world’s first superstar trance DJ, Paul Oakenfold, would select it for his first overground DJ mix, 1994’s Journeys By DJ: Journey Through The Spectrum, a taste of his set playing for 95,000 people at Napoli Football Stadium, where he opened for U2 on their Zooropa Zoo TV Tour. It’s the searing soul of Leftfield that made them a unique mix of musical currents, shaped and beat by their hard hands. It’s that slight aggressive and sometimes even dangerous edge — punks to the last — that gives their music such purpose, however framed inside ‘90s rave idealism, whether it’s shark jaws or the samurai armor on their hardened followup, Rhythm and Stealth.
You can hear it loud and clear on the Tourism version of ‘Song of Life,’ its ending a tear-inducing ride into the very core of what every raver ever believed was the truth at the end of a long journey, that promised a timeless land. Even if techno was the great precognitive dream of a future that may never arrive, Sissay’s words still await: “How many homes set alight, till we fight?” he recites in his ‘21st Century Poem,’ echoing Leftfield’s defiance. “How many futures must we dream, till we scream? How many sins must they repeat, till we're beat? How many? How many times?”*****
And yet, and yet, bass was the real place where Leftfield fought. From the deepest depths to the highest highs, their progression into the wide and low and their touch of melody and gentle tones, did indeed open up rave to a bigger world, like those shark jaws yawning wide. At their album release party, they even wiled their way into the former Greater London Council headquarters in Lambeth, a stately palace once a central hub of local government with its columns and its limestone façade.
Leftism had entered the UK album charts with momentum, when Barnes’s highest hope was for maybe #30; and would be nominated for a Mercury Prize. “We drove around and rang on doorbells,” Daley recounted to Muzik. “It was like going back to the days of warehouse parties — except it’s more difficult to do nowadays. We were blown away by the old GLC building as soon as we saw it. We played it down when we asked if we could use it. We told them it was just a small record company launch.”
“We did the soundcheck with an 80K rig,” he continued on. “The whole building was rocking.” Barnes completed the picture of rave-on sub-bass subversion: “It’s such an incredible building. One room, which was where they used to receive dignitaries, was marble and there was the assembly room where the council sat. We had to lay down a special floor in the ballroom.” To which Daley proudly declared, “To be quite honest, I don't think anyone has beaten that party this year.” After the event, the infiltration of such hallowed ground came up in the House of Commons as an affront.
Naturally, as the partiers and the ravers retreated in the aftermath of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 back into clubs and a world of alcohol and bottle service, its repercussions slowly then quickly ebbed away at the social base of rave. What Leftism represented had too little representation in government. The polite society concerns of the House of Commons would in turn make Sissay’s poetry seemingly irrelevant. And yet, its little pulse can never be fully silenced.
Still rated as one of the top albums of all time by publications like Q Magazine, Leftism is a towering mountain in the electronica landscape. Even as its original heady context fades, its fealty to the cult of bass remains a clear signal to anyone who has wavered or missed loud speakers channeling hidden dimensions in sound. For that reason alone, Leftfield is never forgotten and never will. Because it was never just about hitting the chest and the gut, but about awaking the entire world.
Track Listing:
1. Release the Pressure
2. Afro-Left
3. Melt
4. Song of Life
5. Original
6. Black Flute
7. Space Shanty
8. Inspection (Check One)
9. Storm 3000
10. Open Up
11. 21st Century Poem
*The two drummers met at the Sandals’ acid jazz club night in Soho, London, at the Violets sex joint. They would together also start their own label, Hard Hands, with the imprint of a human hand on it, emphasizing that human touch. Also worth considering is that one of ACMA’s best songs, ‘Earthly Powers,’ was co-written by Daley. It has his trademark bass surges, which would later appear on some of the ‘Release the Pressure’ mixes and elsewhere.
**The original ‘Intoxicate’ by React 2 Rhythm is no slacker track. A deep house number, it was one of React 2 Rhythm’s first singles, following on their breakout Rhythm Addiction release. It’s a fun, chugging, and emotive song. That said, while it contains most of the elements that Leftfield’s ‘Dubfield’ mix would use, it is entirely different and by comparing, helps illustrate the distinctiveness of Leftfield’s sound.
***The “Windrush” generation refers to the Afro-Caribbean immigrants to England from the greater British Empire, many descended from slaves and natives, or mixed, of the Caribbean islands, e.g. Jamaica. They came in waves in the 1950s and through the 1970s. Much of the reggae and dub movements throughout the UK stem from Windrush enclaves and influences, and via sound systems like Jah Shaka’s. Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, and London, were major center-points.
****Highly acclaimed, the ‘Open Up’ single was considered by many, including mainstream rock journalists, as one of Lydon’s most thrilling moments. As Buckley indicated, it was a major crossover moment, and along with Underworld’s “guitar-trance,” as Tope termed it, helped scramble the old tired genre labels and preconceptions that kept musicians apart and styles stuck in the past.
So while Leftfield seemed less upset by MTV’s refusal to play the full ‘Open Up’ video on its then very influential cable TV channel, Lydon was quite annoyed, knowing just how much MTV’s stance would lessen the song’s exposure. The ostensible rationale for the ban was because of wildfires behind Malibu that December, with the “burn, Hollywood, burn!” lyrics deemed insensitive, which does now seem laughable.
“I’m very sorry that some English fool (in Malibu) would rather save a pussy cat than himself, but that’s not my problem,” he told NME. “It should not affect my career…and if the world’s not careful, I’m gonna go out on a cat murdering spree!”
That was of course a little hyperbole from Lydon, but his point was a good one, and directed at an unknown British expat executive living in Malibu, who apparently was involved in the decision to limit ‘Open Up.’
Even so, ‘Open Up’ and Leftism did have a popular impact, as evidenced in soundtracks for Hackers, Trainspotting and Shallow Grave. And yet, like Lydon, one wonders how much more it could have.
*****Not everyone was so keen on such heady emotions. Talking to the gatekeeper magazine of the time, The Face, Leftfield were cast as presumptive: two White guys mixing in futuristic Black rhythms, techno brawn, and reggae-dub aesthetics. Two of the album’s better songs, ‘Afro-Left’ and ‘Inspection (Check One),’ were belittled over two of its straighter, ‘Original’ and ‘Storm 3000,’ described by The Face as novelties where the “ethnic/authentic” button was hit while Barnes and Daley “went out for coffee.” The flippant tone is qualified with “can’t complain, can’t complain,” but redirected with a concluding, “At least they mean it. Maan.” By which in its own regressive way mixes the message up at its many Black singers’ expense.
At least there was acknowledgement that Leftfield were sincere. “It’s about taking things that aren’t associated with dance music,” Daley explained, “and putting them in the arena; that’s what remixing was supposed to be about, and that’s what we try to keep alive.” Ironically, the mainstream press fell in love with the idea of Leftism, and underground writers also mostly sang its praises. Which put Leftfield in an odd and unusual position for an artist with deep roots in clubs and raves.
As they would learn in 1999 with the release of Rhythm and Stealth, it was not just The Face that would begrudge their overground signals inside the arena, but also Leftism partisans who would criticize their sensitivity and loyalty to their more underground ethos and their eagerness to step outside.