Leftfield. This is what we do.

Back with their first album in seven years, and written during a traumatic period, there’s something perhaps deliberately ‘up’ about the new Leftfield long player.  Opening with the big-beat/ disco juggernaut of This is What we do, Leftfield stand out when choosing sounds reminiscent of the late 90s, good-time, break-beat/funk crossover era; This is sounding like a missed off banger from Daft Punk’s Homework, and later funky grooves ‘Accumulator’ and ‘Pulse’ moving the Fielder’s into roaring Prodigy and Flat Eric territory.  It doesn’t all quite work, however, particularly on the collaborations – Grian Chatten’s Full Way Round just about matches Death in Vegas mad techno lines with dark poetry, but some wonky mixes with Lemn Sissay and Earl Sixteen feel like a mismatch of interesting electronics and psychedelic narratives (or vice versa).  There are moments of brilliance for sure, but it’s often when they leave it to themselves.