Following a sterling return to the fray late last year with This Is What We Do, only their fourth album in over 30 years, British dance music A-listers Leftfield are touring again this month, with Cardiff gifted a payday Friday/bank holiday weekend spesh. Founder member Neil Barnes spoke to Buzz’s Jason Machlab.
Leftfield are credited with pioneering many influential sounds in dance music. Is there a conscious effort on your part to stay unique when a lot of dance music now derives from that progressive sound?
Neil Barnes, Leftfield: Yeah, absolutely! It’s increasingly hard to be unique. There’s so much good music being made; but people have the same plugins, everyone’s doing the same stuff from the computer. There is a propensity for things to sound the same.
The reason that – well, I like to think – that what Leftfield do sets us apart is we try to set a standard that we try to improve, or change. Every track is designed to be different. Maybe people will go “Oh that’s Leftfield!? That sounds different.” That is the aim – and to make something that people are able to recognise, nod along to, dance to. It’s a tall order to be honest!
You’ve always embraced progressive ideas too, and artists with a ‘radical’ energy. Why is that so important?
Neil: Music should be about shocking people, and going against the grain. Art shouldn’t be about making people feel necessarily comfortable all the time. It should also be about bending the rules; making people think about things. Even pop music should be doing that.
One of the wonderful things about having David Bowie as a pop musician was that you never knew what his next tune was going to be. If we all just do what we’re meant to do – how we’re meant to behave – music suffers, I think. That’s one of the issues I have with generic dance music.
I read about your recent training in psychotherapy, and wondered if there was a link in your head between that discipline and making music?
Neil: Ah, that’s interesting. That’s very interesting. I think for me, the way that I make music, there is. I enjoy the ‘making’ process when I feel that I am being listened to, people are understanding me and accepting me for who I am. I think the music then feels very similar to good psychotherapy; I just feel accepted and part of something bigger. Good therapy, whatever type it is, makes you feel like you’re being listened to.

I studied songwriting and was taught that the process was about ‘uncovering’ a song that already exists rather than creating one. I was discussing this concept with an art therapist friend, and she described art therapy in a very similar way: uncovering revelations through expression.
Neil: I think that’s pretty true. Sometimes, when there’s something wrong, you actually feel quite uncomfortable around it, because it doesn’t feel like it belongs properly. Like there’s something that you neglected. That’s how I feel about it – it feels like something that isn’t really {me} is in there. That feels really uncomfortable and I don’t like that.
Going back to that idea of ‘uncovering’ songs, I often feel that sometimes, when I’m thinking about writing something, it’s like I’ve got a slab of stone in front of me. The basic form gets made really quite quickly; the themes, the general idea, the pace – and then you’re chipping away at it, to try and get to all the nuances of it.
The first process is quite exciting and quick, and then you go “Ah shit, the vocal’s really rubbish. It doesn’t work, does it?” or “That’s just strange. The drums – they’re odd.” You’ve gotta chip away more at that bit of stone. Then you get your ivory paper out, and you’re sort of polishing away until you’ve got that form, whatever it is.
Leftfield, Great Hall, Cardiff University Students Union, Fri 26 May
Tickets: £35. Info: here
words JASON MACHLAB
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