Original or bust
The rules of making music have long since been rewritten. Do I even need to say that you don't have to play an instrument to make a box office smash hit record nowadays?
- We're not musicians, says Neil. We're just musical people. We like music and we know how to use it.
We've heard this before, right? And secretly dreamt of making the greatest electro grooves on our PC:s and releasing them upon an unsuspecting world, though we never even learned using the recorder. Leftfield have done that, which makes the pressure upon them so much greater. In this scene, you have to bring something new in every time.
- We have to innovate constantly. I think if we didn't do that, we would eventually disappear. The way I see it, originality gives you a long life. But although we change, I definitely think there's a Leftfield sound that you can hear in all our material. I mean, basically, on "Leftism" we used kind of hard and rockish vocalists against a soft backing. This time we've used softer vocals and harder backings. But there is a consistent sound to it. We're not gonna start making fusion jazz or anything.

Working together
Leftfield have a reputation of pulling interesting people into the studio to create melting pots of sound. On "Leftism" Toni Halliday of Curve was among these kidnapped singers, together with toaster Earl Sixteen. This time around we get Afrika Bambaataa, who needs no closer presentation, and rapper Roots Manuva, of whom there is none, among others.
- We look for original people who do original stuff. That's it. The vocalist gets to write the vocal track and the lyrics. We told Afrika Bambaataa that we wanted a kind of dark message, and he had some lyrics like that and went ahead with it. You can't really tell people like him or John Lydon what to sing. They know what they want to do. We just hope it works, which it usually does.

Helped by Guinness commercial
Much of the advertising of "Rhythm and Stealth" has been taken care of for free, courtesy of Guinness, who included a part of "Phat Planet" in an ad that has won great recognition in the UK.
- I don't mind our music being used in advertising, says Neil. Advertising is an art form, and the ads on television are often better than the programs. This ad by Jonathan Glaser is just the best ever, it's totally undescribable. Our music, the voice-over and the brilliant filming in combination really stand out. I really don't see anything negative in using your music like that, as long as you approve of the product being sold. It's no sell out.

Dangers of perfectionism
A couple of the new songs, "Dusted" and "Afrika Shox" among them, have been redone several times. Obsessive perfectionism in the studio seems to be what has delayed the album so long.
- When something sounded predictable, we just had to redo it. As many times as it takes.
Aren't you afraid of overproducing and losing something in the process?
- Yes, but you'll never know what you might come up with unless you try. When you work like this, after a certain point things start to happen and you don't know exactly what until you're there. We try to take chances and push things a bit. You have to get the sound you're hearing in your head. The trick is finding the way there.

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