February 12, 2000

Leftfield : Swords

Directed by [B]Chris Cunningham[/B] so fast asleep he's dead....

Dance Music In Crisis. So says Armand Van Helden, so says 'fashion' DJ Jeremy Healy, who reckons, rightly, dance music is "the heavy metal guitar solo of today" (and all DJs are "tossers, wallies, wankers" before adding, splendidly, "why can't I be The Eagles?"). It should be up, then, to avant-spook 'sound excavationists' like Leftfield to put the art back into the, er, market, but sadly they're finished, too. This is the one that sounds a great deal like Portishead and even more like a slo-mo, black-and-white televisual advertisement for Guinness/Nike/Football Focus directed by Chris Cunningham so fast asleep he's dead. "Danger in every corner..." oozes Nicole Willis, oozily, "I have become pure water... I can identify, I close my eyes... I wear my soul in my side". Right next to the pocket halfway down the side of your billowing pantaloons, probably, handily designed for your DVD-TV-MP3-CD-TSB mobile phone which turns into a bed/hand grenade/square-meal-for-one depending on your 'needs'. (Yours for #99.99 from a sweatshop in Coventry, hand-built by robots who used to be called people, paid 7p a week.) Mmmn. Where were we?

Sylvia Patterson