Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

On Thursday 23rd November 2023 The KLF re- appeared with a website KLF Kare (providing 'branding solutions to independently owned care homes'), a song (a cover/ version/ premix of Harry Nillson's Everybody's Talkin' At Me, with Ricardo Da Force on vocals and a lengthy introductory sample from Top of The Pops. You can hear it here) and in Toxteth, Liverpool a night time event including the laying of bricks for The People's Pyramid, a procession across the Mersey and an afterparty at Future Yard in Birkenhead. 23rd November 2023 was always likely to be a day of KLF action, the number 23 being highly significant in KLF world and Discordianism and 23rd November being significant previously in KLF activities. 

The 23rd November was also Isaac's birthday and the age he was when he died. I've written before about 23 and Isaac, including the fact that I was reading John Higgs' book about the KLF when he died and how when I picked the book up a few weeks later, the first chapter I read was about the importance of 23 to The KLF and in Discordianism. When I woke up on Thursday, which was a really tough day all round, I found The KLF in my various social media feeds, the above 23 graphic jumping out at me. A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a photograph of the famous KLF ice cream van, which turned up at a KLF event she attended, the number 23 emblazoned on its side. I left a comment on one of her posts, coincidentally (or not) 23 minutes after she posted it. Etc etc etc. 

Today's Sunday mix therefore suggested itself- demanded itself really. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

• I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll
• Jerusalem On The Moors
• Kylie Said To Jason (Full length Version)
• Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)
• 3 a.m. Eternal (Blue Danube Orbital)
• It's Grim Up North Part 1
• Last Train To Trancentral (White Room Version)
• What Time Is Love? Live At Trancentral (Radio Edit)

I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll is from Bill Drummond's solo album The Man, an album recorded and released by Creation in 1986 when he was 33.3 years old and ready for 'a revolution in my life'. This song is fairly self explanatory and contains lyrical and musical references that would appear in his public life thereafter- pedal steel guitar (Chill Out), Penkiln Burn (his website) and his belief that Elvis is king among them. 

Jerusalem On the Moors was the fourth track on the CD single release of It's Grim Up North, a weatherblasted orchestral take that fades into techno. It's Grim Up North was recorded as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and released as a single in 1991, a list of northern towns set to industrial  techno, two men with the world at feet and the freedom to do whatever they wanted to. It's Grim Up North Part 1 is ten minutes long, starting out lyrically in Bolton and ending in Cleethorpes, taking in Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Kirkby, Kearsley, Keighley, Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs, Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge, Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St Annes, Clitheroe, Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheadle, Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington, Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ilkley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Halifax, Bingley, Bramhall and the M62 in between. 

The KLF released Kylie Said To Jason in 1989, the only survivor from the pair's road trip film, The White Room, with the titular stars of Neighbours and SAW set to a track that is the full fruits of Drummond and Cauty's Pet Shop Boys obsession. It was designed to sell bucket loads of records and establish The KLF in the charts. It failed to make the top 100. 

Justified And Ancient was released as a single on 25th November 1991 and while typing this I see that this is today's date, thirty two years later, which wasn't planned but doesn't surprise me either. Do you need me to explain the genius of this song, of Tammy Wynette, stadium house, King Boy D, Rockman Rock and an ice cream van, all bound for Mu Mu Land? You do not. Bring the beat back. 

3 a.m. Eternal was The KLF's second monster, a top ten hit. This mix from the 12", the Blue Danube Orbital Mix, is by The Orb, a sound collage/ ambient house version and sounds like part of Chill Out that went missing and resurfaced, the Blue Danube waltz section in the middle the interruption to the chilled out bliss. 

Last Train To Trancentral was a single in 1990, released as per in multiple versions and mixes, Pure Trance, Live From The Lost Continent, Iron Horse and several others. This is The White Room version, from the album with rap from Ricardo da Force and vocals from Black Steel, Maxine Harvey and Wanda Dee. Trancentral is The KLF's spiritual home, a place they were bound for, Mu Mu Land, the lost continent. It was also their recording studio in Stockwell, south London (also Jimmy Cauty's squat)

I had to include What Time Is Love?, in many ways the definitive KLF song, a genuine acid house classic, one that straddles borders and slips into The Live At Trancentral Version came out in 1990, an extraordinary moment of brilliance as the sincere, surreal and chaotic world of Drummond and Cauty collided with mainstream culture and the stadium house trilogy went overground. The radio Edit here brings this mix in at just shy of forty five minutes and so would fit on one side of a c90 cassette. As the beats hammer away, the siren blares and the rave riff repeats, let me ask you a question... 

Monday's Long Song

My ongoing, erm, relationship (for want of a better word) with the number 23 continues. The walk up the canal towpath into town that I did a couple of times in the summer saw me come across a pair of graffiti 23s- from memory they were the only numbers among the many painted and tagged walls (apart from a 2-1 reference to the cup final, proper old school graffiti). I'm aware that confirmation bias means they may be the only numbers I noticed and that I might be looking out for them, subconsciously. The pair of graffiti 23s don't seem to be the work of the same artist. When we were in South London for the end of August bank holiday weekend we walked up the high street to get to the train station, turned a corner and I almost walked into this piece of street furniture...

At the start of the summer my brother in law and sister in law stayed the night with us before flying from Manchester airport. We went to one of the local pubs and while I stood at the bar ordering they went to find a table. More or less the only one free was this one...

Channel surfing one night I flicked the button and moved up from Channel 4 and onto a Channel 5 countdown of the Best Songs Of 1986 at this exact moment...

I don't think there's anything especially mystical about this. It's coincidence I'm sure. Other numbers appear all around us, I just don't notice them the same way. 

Isaac was twenty three when he died and his birthday is the 23rd November (we have that anniversary and the anniversary of his death (a week later, the 30th November) suddenly appearing in our view again. Both those dates last year were awful, the weeks building up to them especially. When he went into hospital in November 2021 with Covid I was a few chapters into Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds by John Higgs, a book about The KLF. I didn't pick it up again until a few weeks after he died and the first chapter I then read was about the number 23, its place in The KLF's mythology and the significance of the number in Discordianism (a religion or set of ideas invented by Greg Hill and Kerry Wendell Thornley in the early 1960s, taking in some aspects of Zen coupled with absurdism and beliefs/ theories about order and disorder. You can get as much or as little from it as you like. The KLF take a lot from it but with them its always difficult to tell whether they're deadly serious or playing). What freaked me out reading the chapter back in December 2021, wracked with grief and loss and pain, was the number 23 and its concurrence with Isaac's life and death. After that, I started seeing twenty threes fairly often, not least this summer. Again, I know about confirmation bias and suspect that twenty three is a fairly commonly occurring number. But also, I've come to like it when I see one, it makes me smile- the only rule is that seeing or finding one has to be accidental, it can't happen as a result of deliberately looking for them- in some ways, it feels like a weird little connection to him.  

Jimmy Cauty of The KLF and Jem Finer of The Pogues have released an EP, four versions of a track titled The Hurdy- Gurdy Song, calling themselves Local Psycho And The Hurdy- Gurdy Orchestra. The three versions on the A-side of the 12" are all fairly short, between three and six minutes long, ambient/ rave celebrating the ancient and the current, the old stones that decorate our landscape and the year 2023. The B-side of the 12" is taken up entirely with The Stone Club Remix, a long version that is twenty three minutes long (of course it is). 

The Stone Club Remix is long with a very drawn out intro, bleeps, drones, the specific broken bagpipe- like drone of the hurdy- gurdy front and centre, noises, seagulls, a voice talking about the stones and about 'being the custodians of this place', echoes, found sound. Eventually, about thirteen minutes in a rhythm appears, drums of some sort, tapping away in the reverb smothered distance, through a haze. 

The EP is available at Bandcamp, digitally and on vinyl (although the vinyl was running very low when I wrote this post). Initially there were three hundred 12" singles in sleeves hand painted by Cauty and two hundred in plain sleeves. Two and three again. 

What Time Is Love?

23rd of August 2017 according to this poster which also states that 'The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu are currently at work in their light industrial unit.'

K2 Plant Hire twitter here.

Bill Drummond on punk.


PUNK'S NOT DEAD from Penkiln Burn on Vimeo.

Pulling Out Of Ricardo And The Dusk Is Falling Fast

I don't know about you but I could do with a lie down in a darkened room for a little while.



The KLF's Chill Out, forty four minutes and twenty seconds long, recorded in one go by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, and released in February 1990, is a mythical drive through the night up the Gulf Coast from Texas into Louisiana. Bill Drummond said at the time he'd never been to those places, it was all in his head. If you want more about the background, samples, recording, track titles and whatnot there's more here. But maybe it's best just to press play and let go.

It seems wrong to let today go by without a tip of the trilby to Leonard Cohen.

'Now I bid you farewell
I don't know when I'll be back
They're moving us tomorrow
To the tower down the track
But you'll be hearing from me baby
Long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you softly
From a window in the tower of song'

Blue Danube

The KLF were self evidently one of the best things about the late 80s/early 90s. The fact that their stadium house was as brilliant as their philosophy, pranks, activities and statements is a massive bonus. On this mix of 3 a.m. Eternal The Orb, old muckers of Jimmy Cauty- in fact Cauty had started The Orb with Alex Paterson- turn stadium house back into ambient house.

3 a.m. Eternal (Blue Danube Orb Mix)

Centre Of The World

I rediscovered this the other day while looking for something else- Andrew Weatherall's ten minute long remix of the Moody Boys from 1992, percussive dub house that goes through several distinct phases and when those strings come in at the end it's all quite epic. Perfect for the Monday before Christmas.

Centre Of The World (The Potless Mix)

The Moody Boys were Tony Thorpe and Jimmy Cauty (up until 1992 when he retired from the music business following The KLF's explosive finale). Their records merged African music with club culture which is far more evident in the Nubian Club Mix (video below, I don't have an mp3 of it on this hard drive). Guaranteed to put a smile on your face- unlike Christmas shopping three days before the event, which is what I have to do now.

What Time Is Love?

It's a long road from Liverpool's punk scene and Big In Japan (a band described memorably recently on BBC4 as 'less than the sum of their parts') to global success with The KLF's stadium house but it is the road Bill Drummond travelled between 1976 and 1991. He's done much of interest since too but today's post is about The KLF and their massive What Time Is Love?, remixed here by Austria's Jurgen Koppers. Mu Mu.

What Time is Love (Power Mix)

Snubbed Again

The KLF- I don't remember this interview so I must have missed this episode. I used to have a lot of them taped on VHS but they went the way of all tape and are probably landfill now. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, neither the easiest man to live with I reckon, made some fantastic records, provided a gateway to dance music for NME readers, had a good play around with notions of what it was to be a pop star and a musician, machine gunned the Brit awards, drove around the M25 for 25 hours and burnt a substantial sum of money. Bill Drummond continues to write thought provoking and interesting books. Jimmy Cauty has a vitriolic and slightly unsettling blog. All good fun.

Childish Forts

I got the new 7" from Billy Childish's latest group The Chatham Forts in the post while I was away. It's very cool, sharp chords and plenty of vim, and featuring The KLF- Jimmy Cauty on bass and Bill Drummond on xylophone. Needless to say it doesn't sound anything like The KLF. This has turned up on Youtube, not as angular as the single All Our Forts Are With You, but chugs away very well...



This was The KLF's greatest moment, still sounding monumental 23 years later.

What Time Is Love?

Wild Billy Childish And The KLF

An recent email from Damaged Goods reveals another new Billy Childish band (The Chatham Forts) and a limited edition 7" single in April. The new band sees Billy return to vocals and a 'sound that is more akin to The Mighty Caesers / Headcoats with even a little of The Pop Rivets in there as well, a slightly angular, new wave approach'. 

So far, so good- nothing too unexpected though. The excitement and mind-boggling bit comes with the final line of the message- 'We will have the album to follow in the summer......oh yeah, it also has Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond on it as well…that’s the KLF to you'.

Billy Childish and The KLF?! I know! And yet... what will it sound like? Garage rock crossed with stadium house? Or what? 

This song is from Bill Drummond's solo lp The Man- a song named after Dumfries' football team.

Queen Of The South

Sunday Orb

Minnie Riperton's voice features heavily on this record too, so heavily she got a writing credit for the liberal use of her very well known, multi-octave Lovin' You. The Orb's A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld is a definitive slice of 1990 ambient dance dub, and to these ears The Orb's stuff from this point sounds better and better as each year passes. Someone once wrote that this type of music at this time had a huge sense of possibility, that in the studio (often a bedroom) and on vinyl anything was now possible. As the dance scene fractured and split and people ploughed their own furroughs in the years afterwards that sense of possibility receded a bit. Written and recorded with The KLF's Jimmy Cauty at Transcentral, this is eight and a bit minutes of open minded, open ended brilliance.

A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Orbital Dance Mix)