The future had landed. A brave new dawn of eclectic dance music was tearing up the UK dancefloors – first synthesised and rinsed from the near mythological turntables of Sasha and John Digweed, who were storming the underground and overground rave scene – when I first tuned into the collective fused frequencies of this record.
House. Trance. Dub. Ambient. Tribal, even. Leftism picked the pockets of the loaded 1990’s dance scene and reinvented the spinning 12” record wheel to boot.
I was in the element of bliss – dancing in timeless slow motion in the white strobe light, under the sweat dripping arches of a Brighton seafront nightclub, grooving deep into the heavenly new wave trance of Sasha – when he dropped ‘A Song for Life’.
Bodies were writhing in synchronised flux: tranced-out chemical brothers and sisters, flowing beautiful glamour pusses, shading ugly terrace boys, pouting muscle ripped gays, heavy on the amyl fiends, and the cream of the Brighton club scene were caught mesmerised in the Leftfield headlights.
On the other side of the City, a loud revolution of the turntable was happening. In the abandoned Bingo halls, derelict old supermarkets, or empty newspaper printing buildings, the Sound-Systems were out in force. From the dark urban hidings of Black Rock to the coastal industrial delights of Shoreham Power Station, the free party crowds would gather as the wily knowing DJ’s dug out Leftfield from the crate.
‘Release the Pressure’ would sign off the intention and right to party. An anthemic call to urban arms, with its incendiary opening bars. And the police rolled in across the City, clasping the shiny new baton powers of the Criminal Justice Act.
Tune in. Strain the ears. You might even hear the guest spot vocals of legendary Punk Rocker John Lydon, calling on a generation to ‘Open Up and report to the dancefloor.