History

Bill Drummond was an established figure within the British music industry, having co-founded Zoo Records,^[1] played guitar in the Liverpool band Big in Japan,^[2] and worked as manager of Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes.^[3] In 1986, he resigned from his position as an A&R man at record label WEA, citing that he was nearly 33.3 years old (33.3 revolutions per minute being significant to Drummond as the speed at which a vinyl LP revolves), and that it was "time for a revolution in my life. There is a mountain to climb the hard way, and I want to see the world from the top".^[4] He released a well-received solo LP, The Man, judged by reviewers as "tastefully understated,"^[5] a "touching if idiosyncratic biographical statement"^[6] encapsulating "his bizarrely sage ruminations",^[7] and "a work of humble genius: the best kind".^[6]

The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu

The Timelords

In 1988, Drummond and Cauty became "Time Boy" and "Lord Rock", and released a 'novelty' pop single, "Doctorin' the Tardis" (sample (help·info)) as The Timelords. The song is predominantly a mash-up of the Doctor Who theme music and Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (Part Two)", with sparse vocals inspired by The Daleks and Harry Enfield's "Loadsamoney" character. "Doctorin' the Tardis" reached number one in the UK Singles Chart on 12 June, and charted highly in Australia and New Zealand.

The KLF

By the time the JAMs' single "Whitney Joins The JAMs" was released in September 1987, their record label had been renamed "KLF Communications" (from the earlier "The Sound of Mu(sic)"). However, the duo's first release as The KLF was not until March 1988, with the single "Burn the Bastards"/"Burn the Beat" (KLF 002). Although the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu name was not yet retired, most future Drummond and Cauty releases would go under the name "The KLF".

Retirement

On 12 February 1992, The KLF and hardcore heavy metal group Extreme Noise Terror performed a live version of "3 a.m. Eternal" at the Brit Awards, the British Phonographic Industry's annual awards show, a "violently antagonistic performance" in front of "a stunned music-business audience".^[38] Drummond and Cauty had planned to throw buckets of sheep's blood over the audience, but were prevented from doing so due to opposition from BBC lawyers^[39][40] and "hardcore vegans" Extreme Noise Terror.^[41][29] The performance (sample (help·info)) was instead garnished by a limping, kilted, cigar-chomping Drummond firing blanks from an automatic weapon over the heads of the crowd. Later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit [sic]" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties.^[41]

K Foundation and post-retirement projects

Themes

Several threads and themes unify the many incarnations of Drummond and Cauty's creative partnership. Mostly these are esoteric or opaque in nature, which has led some people to compare Drummond and Cauty's incarnations to The Residents for their antics, if not their music.^[61][62] Drummond and Cauty have also been compared to Stewart Home and the Neoists.^[63] Home himself said that the duo's work "has much more in common with the Neoist, Plagiarist and Art Strike movements of the nineteen-eighties than with [Situationism,] the avant-garde of the fifties and sixties." Drummond and Cauty "represent a vital and innovative strand within contemporary culture", he added.^[64]

Illuminatus!

Drummond and Cauty made heavy references to Discordianism, a modern chaos-based religion originally described by Malaclypse The Younger in Principia Discordia, but popularised by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in the Illuminatus! books, published between 1969 and 1971. The attitude and tactics of Drummond and Cauty's partnership matched that of the fictional cult whose name they had adopted. Throughout the partnership, these tactics were often interpreted by media commentators as "pranks" or "publicity stunts". However, according to Drummond, "That's just the way it was interpreted. We've always loathed the word scam. I know no-one's ever going to believe us, but we never felt we went out and did things to get reactions. Everything we've done has just been on a gut level instinct."^[65]

Trancentral, Eternity, Sheep

Trancentral (aka the Benio^[72]) was the operations centre of The KLF, their mythological home, and their studios. Despite the grandiose lyrics of "Last Train To Trancentral", Trancentral was in fact Cauty's residence in Stockwell, South London, "a large and rather grotty squat" said David Stubbs in Melody Maker. "Jimmy has lived [there] for 12 years. ('I hate the place. I've no alternative but to live here.') There's little evidence of fame or fortune. The kitchen is heated by means of leaving the three functioning gas rings on at full blast until the fumes make us all feel stoned.... And, pinned just above a working top cluttered with chipped mugs is a letter from a five-year-old fan, featuring a crayon drawing of the band."^[61]

Ceremonies and journeys

Drummond and Cauty's work often involved notions of ceremony and journey. Journeys are the subject of the KLF Communications recordings Chill Out, Space, "Last Train to Trancentral", The White Room, "Justified and Ancient" and "America: What Time Is Love?", as well as the aborted film project The White Room. In his book 45, Drummond expressed his admiration for the work of artist Richard Long, who incorporates physical journeys into his art.^[73]

Promotion

Legacy

Despite their protestations of 1988 about not wishing to be seen as crusaders for sampling,^[30] The JAMs continue to be associated with the cultural movement which retrospectively bundles together those literary and artistic works that make use of 'creative plagiarism'. 1987: What the Fuck Is Going On?, is considered a landmark work in the early history of sampling music in the United Kingdom. (See Bastard pop.)

Opinions of contemporaries

In 1991, Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys said that he considered the only other worthwhile group in the UK to be The KLF. Neil Tennant added that "They have an incredibly recognisable sound. I liked it when they said EMF nicked the F from KLF.^[84] They're from a different tradition to us in that they're pranksters and we've never been pranksters."^[36]

Direct influence

The KLF have been imitated to some degree by German techno band Scooter, and were themselves apparently the victims of a "hoax" when an outfit called "1300 Drums featuring the Justified Ancients of M.U." released a novelty single to cash-in on the popularity of Manchester United footballer Eric Cantona. 1300 Drums even made a KLF-style Top of the Pops appearance, with the "band" wearing Cantona masks. The authorship of "Ooh Aah" remains unresolved: at least one source maintains that Drummond and Cauty were 1300 Drums.^[86]

Career retrospectives

Drummond and Cauty have made frequent appearances in the British broadsheets and music papers since The KLF's retirement, most often in connection with the K Foundation and their burning of a million quid. It is worth noting that The KLF in their various incarnations have been to an extent "media darlings" who have received largely unqualified praise from the printed media. This may or may not be due to what NME called their "Master[y] of manipulating media and perceptions of themselves".^[89]

Instrumentation

Early releases by The JAMs, including the album 1987, were performed using an Apple II computer with a Greengate DS3 sampler peripheral card, and a Roland TR-808 drum machine.^[96][97] On later releases, the Greengate DS3 and Apple II were replaced with an Akai S900 sampler and an Atari computer respectively.^[83] The house music of Space and The KLF involved much original instrumentation, for which the Oberheim OB-8 analogue synthesiser was prominently used.^[98]

Selected discography

Notes and references

Find out more about KLF on Wikipedia