Get ready for your ears to bleed..

It's 1995, and I am now fairly well entrenched in the Electronic music scene through a combination of my love for mainstream dance, house and rave tunes and those that cross over from the more obscure corners of the world. Thanks to my friends and Q Magazine - which was my bible for over a decade - I am slowly learning of new and interesting artists on the scene.

Enter stage left (no pun intended): Paul Daley and Neil Barnes aka Leftfield with their debut album "Leftism".

Reggae/dub stylings wrap themselves neatly around pulsating house beats to create an unique sounding album that is one of the best complete listening works of the 1990's.

The opening whistling on "Release The Pressure" makes way for blips and pops that sound like they're coming from a space transition, beautifully overlaid with beats and an Earl Sixteen vocal which adds terrifically to the overall feel of the track. "RTP" continues to roll and rumble for over 7 and a half minutes, but like any good house tune it has the radio-friendly accessibility of something that could've been 3 minutes long.

"Afro Left" utilizes a neat guitar pluck, bongos and African chant song alongside beats to create a very tribal, rhythmic track. It is quite hypnotic and pounds along as the ideal tune to drive to.

Bringing it down a notch, we then have "Melt" which is almost an entirely beatless ambient effort. It uses some wonderful horn sampling alongside the synths and beeps to create the relaxed aesthetic, providing a shuffling beat almost akin to a slow march. Very easy to get lost in this one, as it rolls along beautifully.

"Song Of Life" was the first Leftfield track I ever heard (in its shorter form) and the full album track is an absolute work of art. The reggae dub first half - with female vocal chant - glides along wonderfully and then makes way for a change of pace as the beats seamlessly come into view. Then the track takes on a whole new shape as a fully fledged house song, as if someone literally switched on the strobe in the club and hit 'start' on the smoke machine.

"Sonically we're in control, we're the diamond in your soul. Images come thick and fast, from the future from the past".

The opening lyrics to "Original" sung by Toni Halliday make some sense, which is alien to most Electronic songs where lyrics are kind of thrown together nonsensically. When you listen to or dance to Leftfield, you are taken to a place that reminds you of formative moments in your life: I'd agree with that and most music does evoke these emotions.

Kerri: I know you may never read this but you put this album on at about 3am when I'd carried you back to your house from a particularly heavy night out. I pretty much instantly loved it and that's why I am writing about it now.

"Black Flute" speeds things up somewhat from the Electronica dub of "Original", offering a more straightforward head nodding beatfest. It then segues nicely into "Space Shanty" which keeps the same BPM and offers a sitar intro, distorted chanting before moving into rolling synth alongside its insistent beats.

"Inspection Check One" is Earl Sixteen's moment, offering patois stylings across the track which has a fantastic reggae dub beat. I have absolutely no idea what the man is saying but it just works really well.

"Storm 3000" is one of my favorite tracks on Leftism, and is probably the closest effort that Barnes and Daley get to drum and bass/rave crossover. The beats are immediately pushed front and centre, and the synths bounce in and out cutting so cleanly through the track it just flows really, really well.

John Lydon (of Sex Pistols fame, yes) is the key contributor of guest vocal on "Open Up", ably assisted by another pummeling beat array from Barnes and Daley. Originally I found the track slightly irritating as Lydon's vocal is slightly grating, but it has really grown on me over the years.

The closing track is "21st Century Poem" which takes us back to the ambient/chillout of "Melt", and it really does offer the perfect come down after the aural onslaught.

This album deserves to be played loudly in the car or on the stereo, as it is purported that many a Leftfield gig-goer actually came away from venues with bleeding ears due to being pounded by the bass bins. Wow.

As with many Electronic artists that peak too soon, Leftfield's sophomore effort is by comparison, a disappointment.

My main problem with "Rhythm and Stealth" is that - after a 4 year break - I was expecting a little more creatively from Leftfield, and what was presented was somewhat of a carbon copy of "Leftism" but with poorer/too similar material in the main on offer.

"Dusted" is basically "Release The Pressure" in a slightly different wrapper, and whilst it is good it doesn't scream original.

"Phat Planet" - better known as the backdrop to the Guinness surfing advert of the late 1990's - is at least an aural onslaught with a very visceral and grimy beat construction which feels like it would hurt if you heard it live too close up.

"Chant of a Poor Man" is a slow reggae effort which is okay but doesn't really go anywhere, "Double Flash" takes us almost exactly back to "Phat Planet" (which is lazy really), and "El Cid' is a moderately pleasant ambient track which chunters along.

"Afrika Shox" could almost be a "Fat of the Land"-era Prodigy track, with its pumping beat, robotic vocal sampling and Zulu referencing lyrics. Probably one of the better tunes on the album.

"Dub Gussett" (what?!), "Swords", "6/8 War" and "Rino's Prayer" are all forgettable and I have to admit I needed to re-listen to all of the album to re-familiarise myself with it, as it really did not leave a lasting impression. Shame.

Then Leftfield decided to hang up the headphones, switch off the samplers and decks and go to ground, for what I assumed was permanently....

....until 2015 arrived with a rumor of a revival. Neil Barnes was left at the helm after Paul Daley bowed out to follow a solo career, but by god it's a good thing Leftfield are back and what a return!

"Alternative Light Source" arrives 16 years after "Rhythm and Stealth" to remind people why Leftfield were good, and it does it in spades. My album of 2015, easily.

The reason this works is because Barnes gets the collaborations right, using a combination of relative unknowns and currently relevant artists.

"Bad Radio" is the opener and it hits you right between the eyes with its insistent beat, synths and sampling as well as the vocals provided amiably by Tunde Adebimpe.

"Universal Everything" stutters into being like a crashed computer suddenly whirring back into life. The beats arrive and are followed by reverberating synths which echo in and out of the rhythm signature, as this track builds to a crescendo on 3 mins 30 secs. Get ready to switch on the strobe. We are then launched into full house track mode and the result is stunning.

"Bilocation" bounces into view with beeps, blips and a lovely vocal from Channy Leaneagh which is almost deliberately left a little behind the beats in the edit.

What follows is a track which I originally didn't get, as it didn't feel like it fitted. Jason Williamson from Sleaford Mods (my new favorite rap artists and cynical protagonists of the rusty, underwhelming, grimy underbelly of the working class man's East Midlands) fronts this track, and it is actually a superb tune when taken in isolation.

"Dark Matters" brings things back more to Leftfield's kind of level, offering a marching paced intro before settling into a semi-beatless synth opus which bounces and pops along.

Next, we are treated to "Little Fish" and Channy Leaneagh's vocals again, distorted through a sampler and giving them a robotic quality. The synth is tuned up and down on this giving a very Vitalic-esque techno quality to the track.

"Storms End" flies into view like the start of some grandiose space opera, and proceeds to draw you in with its beats and the low-frequency howls and moans that accompany it.

The title track "Alternative Light Source" starts with some guitar samples and continues in beatless fashion to grind to a crescendo before fading away with some echoes and beeps...

...starting up life again as "Shaker Obsession" using a shuffling rhythm and sliding wow-effect on the synth/samplers to go full techno on us again. This track really does have teeth.

"Levitate For You" uses Ofei Sakyi's beautiful vocals and minimal beats to create an ethereal and dreamlike state within the structure of the track, making it there perfect comedown.

"Alternative Light Source" is the album that Leftfield fans deserved after "Leftism" and I genuinely cannot decide which I like more after utterly disregarding "Rhythm and Stealth".

Once again I hope to be able to enjoy them live soon as I didn't have the privilege the first time around, but Leftfield serve as a perfect example of an act that didn't have to fundamentally reinvent itself 16 years later to be relevant, and they certainly aren't alone in that regard in the Electronic music world.

Badger x