Field Of Dreams

The big announcement comes halfway through our conversation. Cagey about future plans and seemingly keen to simply do his two landmark records justice on stage since Leftfield’s comeback in 2010, Neil Barnes is finally ready to write the next chapter of his revered dance act’s story. He’ll be going it alone without Paul Daley, as with recent tours, but a new LP is in the pipeline.

“I can say now, for the first time ever, to you, that I am going to be doing a new Leftfield album,” Barnes offers as he sips a coffee during a break from work in his home studio. “It’s taken me quite a long time to get to the point where I felt that it was okay to do it. I also don’t want to make a big deal about it because I don’t have ‘an album’ yet. I have been working on tracks though, so I’ve got stuff already done. That’s what I’m planning. All my effort is going into that.”
A light-hearted game of cat and mouse ensues where I push for details. He’s an English gentleman, and quite open, but he’s still not certain himself.  
“It’s not ‘distant’ as in years away, no,” he concedes. “But it’s going to take a year or so to get it to a certain level. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The idea is to do something that’s a development in music. I can’t reinvent the wheel, obviously there’s a sound to Leftfield that we’ve got, but without having Paul involved it will be a different type of record. I’m planning on working with some really exciting people. I can say that, but I can’t
say who!”
While we wait with baited breath for his new adventures in hi-fi, we still have two stunning Leftfield records to pass the time, the first of which, 1995’s Leftism, may well be one of the most important releases in the history of electronica. 
The proposed third has a lot to live up to, and for the past two years, the world has been reminded of those early peaks in a live arena. In June, Barnes brings the show to Forbidden Fruit. As always, all the talk is about what guest vocalists will join him. ‘Open Up’ was their mainstream breakthrough in the early ‘90s and featured vocals from one John Lydon, but it’s been a struggle to enlist the former Mr. Rotten for live duties.
“I’ve tried desperately to get him to come and do the track, believe you me,” Barnes sighs. “I ask him all the time. He’s concentrating on the PiL thing, really getting that together and whenever I ask him, he’s doing something else. Who knows though.”
Barnes has known the punk icon for an age. What does he make of the Sex Pistols’ current stance against QEII’s upcoming Diamond Jubilee celebrations? It’s a little like 1977 repeating.
“Good on them,” he giggles. “It’s wicked.”
I’m surprised Leftfield aren’t booked to play the roof of Buckingham Palace to be honest.
“Haha, yeah! I think we’d fit in verrry nicely! I mean, who’s doing it? Will it be the Royal Family’s favourite bands?”
Not entirely sure, though Gary Barlow seems to
be involved.
“Oh Take That, fair enough,” he scoffs. “We haven’t even been asked to do anything for the Olympics full-stop, which I think is shocking actually. They’re getting Duran Duran to do the big concert here. I don’t get that one, as much as I like their music!”
It does seem that the dance genre is still grossly overlooked, despite the fact it’s long been established as a massive force, commercially and critically.
“It is really. It’s weird. I think there’s a bit of a divide still between the rock side and the dance side. There’s room for them both to work together. We’re doing a gig with The Prodigy this summer, which we’ve never done before. I reckon we’ll be quite complementary. We’ll see how it goes, but in the future I can see that working very nicely.”
After an eight-year break away from the spotlight, Barnes sounds today like a man on a mission. The hiatus (in truth, a spilt between himself and Daley) that came about at the turn of the century irks him now. Leftfield had crossed over into the general public’s consciousness (helped in no small way by ‘Phat Planet’s use in a famous Guinness commercial) and then… they stopped. A brief falling out, the apparent end of the act, just in time to see their imitators reap all the benefits from their absence.
“I think we gave up at the point where we could have gone on and, for the first time, actually made a little bit of money for all the hard work,” Barnes says with a forced laugh. “It was a stupid decision. Just at the point we gave up, all these other people came on and cashed completely in on all the work we’d done. As you get older, you think to yourself, and I’m sure Paul does too, ‘oh god, why couldn’t we have sorted it out?’ It went sour between us and that’s a shame, but maybe that’s just what happens. It’s quite common amongst duos. You have demons saying to you, ‘Oh, I don’t need him, I can do it on my own!’ I had things going wrong with my personal life at the time, things got quite difficult for me and I probably didn’t behave in the right way. And I do regret that, yeah. But we made two fantastic records and left a real legacy of quality music. That’s what we did.”
So he can look back fondly, but Barnes clearly doesn’t want Leftfield to continue as some heritage act. In recent years he’s decried the state of music, so maybe he wants to single-handedly set things right? He loves much dubstep, British acts like Burial and James Blake, but he’s quick to criticise British dance in the 21st century, and the music industry
in general.
“I don’t want to put the cat amongst the pigeons,” he ventures, “but I think the stuff coming out of Europe and America has been more exciting lately. It’s like that view where we think the English Premier League is the best league in the world. Until you watch Spanish football and you realise that it’s actually just as good. But if people keep on with the lie and you keep hearing it, you start thinking like that. It was the same with European music.
“Also, I think it’s a low point for albums. I’m going to stamp my nail to the wall. I’m a massive Kate Bush fan, but I think the new Kate Bush album is pants. I think it’s appalling rubbish. It’s got nothing in it that I like about Kate Bush. None of the pop sensibilities, it’s all gone. It’s all middle-class nonsense. When you make music in a bubble, it get cuts off from the world. Who’s interested in a track where someone just says 50 different words for snow over 25 minutes? It’s pretentious. Then she gets voted ‘The Best Female Vocalist’ or whatever. There’s no opinions out there, genuinely. Why can’t people say what they think? Everyone’s fixing it up, that’s how it feels to me. Everyone’s fixing it up so a nice little album review goes in a nice little paper. And everyone loves everything and it’s all gorgeous and wonderful and cuddly. That isn’t what makes good music.”
As a man with a masterpiece or two to his name, he should know. And, if solid details for the future are sketchy, at least we know the third Leftfield album definitely won’t feature any lyrics about snow. We’re off to a good start.