Leftfield were – and indeed still are – an incredible live act, prone to making plaster fall from venue walls. With ‘Leftism’, they transferred this energy onto vinyl. The drums on ‘Song of Life’ sound as if they are hewn out of a mountain, a vast granite slab of echoing noise. The bass rumble on ‘Inspection (Check One)’ is menacing enough even on computer speakers to make you consider a visit to the ENT. 

Leftfield’s career would falter somewhat after ‘Leftism’. They made one more album as a duo, 1999’s ‘Rhythm and Stealth’, before splitting in 2002. Neil Barnes resurrected the group in 2010 for live dates and a third album, touring ‘Leftism’ again when it was reissued in 2017. It is perhaps for this that ‘Leftism’’s reputation remains complicated. Leftfield never really built upon its success, and some of the album’s tracks – notably the straight-up pump of ‘Black Flute’ and the wandering ambience of ‘Melt’ – do sound a little dated today. It didn’t help, either, that the musical genre Leftfield would help birth, progressive house, soon turned into a backward-looking electronic shit show. 

That’s no fault of Leftfield, a band who embraced ideas of musical progression, eclecticism and shameless borrowing while others in the house world stuck to their own guns. To listen to ‘Leftism’ is to be transported back to ‘90s Britain, warts and all. But the album is so much more than mere nostalgia: ‘Leftism’ is a big beautiful bastard of ‘90s Britannia, a reminder of times when house was progressive and Britain was emphatically open for all.