Electro get flowin' and the funk don't stop

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

03/10/99 : Rhythm And Stealth - Leftfield

I bought this album because I liked Leftism (taking the ownership numbers to 6/13) and I think I listened to it once or twice and never revisited it again.  I don't even remember if I liked or hated it though, so this is going to be an interesting one.

Hmmm - I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.  It has a lot of interesting sounds on it, but it also has a lot of not so interesting sounds on it - in fact, it might actually have ALL the sounds on it.  It's a very kitchen sinky kind of album - when it works, as it does on "Phat Planet" (cracking bass), "Chant Of A Poor Man" and "Africa Shox" (echoes of "Open Up"), it works well.  But a lot of the rest just sounds a bit of a mess to me, I'm afraid.  It's certainly got a cool album cover though.

We're at #4 in the charts this week on its second week of a 19 week run, with it having debuted at #1 (which somewhat surprised me - I guess a lot of other people liked Leftism).  The rest of the top five were Tom (a new entry), Shania, Travis and Sting (a new entry with Brand New Day, which I think there's a good argument for being the beginning of the end of my interest in him) and there's one more new entry in the top ten with Nine Inch Nails at #10.

Wikipedia has very little on the album, but I can certainly go with Rolling Stone saying "the album's jumble of epic sounds is a blessing and a curse".  It did OK commercially across Europe though and also reached #4 in Australia.

"Customers also listened to" Orbital, Royksopp, Faithless and The Chemical Brothers - all of whom I quite like (particularly the first two).  And I like some bits of Leftfield, but this album doesn't quite come together as a coherent unit for me, I'm afraid.

26/09/99 - One that deserves some effort
10/10/99 - Surprisingly tolerable