This is Radio Freedom - The KLF: Outer Focus
My radio show about sheep, ley lines, sentient cars, fire, ice cream vans, islands, liverpool, conspiracy, stonehenge, ritual, pyramids and house music.
In essence: I made a KLF special for my Spiral Times radio show on Refuge Worldwide. This is me asking you to listen to it, plus everything I couldn’t fit into two hours about their wonderful frightening world.
One of my earliest memories is watching a Welsh wizard set up a mobile disco from out of the back of a van that was emblazoned with his name, which was DJ Plastic Sam. He was a local Swansea character and vibe purveyor with a pointy beard, long scraggly black hair and a grey top hat. (Before I hit send on this newsletter I had to make the customary call to mother to check that this man from my childhood in 90s Britain had not, in fact, been a sex offender. She offered me a detailed description of the pots in his front garden which are apparently not looking so good these days before reassuring me: “No no, don’t think so. But his brother, who looked just like him, made the choice to be a sort of wandering man, a vagrant, if you like.” Thanks, Mum.)
The guy had been a hot selector at the clubs in town in the 70s but by 1993 was a fixture at every function in my village that required music, from PTA Dinner dances to, apparently, primary school raves. At this one, I remember the lighting rigs he had which magically folded out like little sets of traffic lights onto the floor of our tiny village school hall. Too young yet to be governed by the terrifying laws of snog seduction, we happily did this synchronised dance that involved row-row your boat on the scratched up parquet floor, bit of Agadoo, Chesney Hawkes pumping. Sam’s druidic appearance may well have been the root of my abiding sense that DJing is dark magic, and the song he played next doubtless sealed that deal. I have, in one form or other, had it in my head ever since:
Between ’87 and ‘92, Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond pioneered DIY sampling, invented stadium house (love to the Utah Saints) brought occult magick to Top of the Pops, made a grip of truly beautiful and insane videos and films with Bill Butt, and became the world’s biggest selling singles band of the 80s as the Justified Ancients of Mu-mu, or The KLF. Then they committed the indelible act of destruction they’d become known for, which defies an easy narrative even today.
Filmmaker Chris Atkins took ten years to make an unauthorised documentary called ‘Who killed the KLF?’ the audio for which he edited much from an open prison after being done for tax fraud (imo a glaring stitch up given some of the subjects of his previous work.) Anyway, the doc was truly wicked (peep the trailer here, Paul Oakenfold’s botox on fine form) high budget with a fan-made feel in the best way, and it hit me in that specific way that some really good art does, which is that I get the intense and insatiable urge to shamelessly counterfeit, remix or add to it somehow. The film had reignited my dormant obsession with these eldritch bangers and the broader Kult of Mu so I did what I had to with the tools at my disposal.
Come to their lost continent via the island of Jura, the Henge where the duo buried their Brit Award (it’s still there) the squat in Stockwell called the Benio aka Trancentral where they built a studio: KLF Communications. Their approach to world domination through a record label also run from that basement (“We made all that money because we were in control”) is an instructive tale for anyone who came up in DIY music, as is their strategic approach to trolling (before it was a thing) the twin bloated bollocks of cokey wideboys of the 80s music industry (very successfully) and the pious nerds of of the 90s music industry (less so.)
Ten things you can expect from the show, in order of appearance:
The sick CHG (cool howling girl) post-punk gruppes that germinated the KLF
Song by a duo called NOW IS THE TIME TO FORGET THE WHIMPERING CHILD AND BECOME THE WARRIOR, obvio
The best Echo and the Bunnymen tune (“...people rolling around on the carpet, mixing up their medicine…”) produced by Bill
The surprising Australian source of the stunning loops of mutated lap steel guitar you later hear sampled across the KLF discography
The real tea on the argument that generated for my money the best non-Eno ambient record there is
A spirited (somewhat out of character for me but.. I contain multipacks) antimaterialist defence of their final incendiary act, where I try really hard not to sound like Banksy
Couple of fun little collages I made because I wanted to hear the sound of a million pounds in fifties burning put to a scary beat
The Red Army Choir doing ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over) which I dare you not to weep over
Done well, dance music is ceremonial magic. The KLF understood that assignment.
Freaky but populist, smart but stupid, self-aware but so often hilarious. Mesmerising, huge-hearted and camp as a druid. Their universe still offers me moments of uneasy peace within the khaos and kontradiction inherent in making art, music or just something of yourself in our bastard world. Hope it does something for you, too.
Ps. Now some tangents I didn’t get to go on in the show:
(encs. KLF as pop heartthrobs, post-Jura work, Mumufication, sources for the audio collages and more bloody links)
The band took a 23 year vow of silence, which they enacted by spraypainting the terms on a car then pushing that off a cliff. While this was enforced until 2017 and was no doubt a key insulator from keeping The KLF from becoming cringe, they do thankfully seem to have stayed a coherent political course better than most auld punks, probably because they didn’t have their creative peak until their mid thirties. Both seem to remain cool and old and kind and making exciting and ambitious art that’s always within their theme and always huge idea first execution second. Mumufictation is one of their latest. It is a posthumous tribute to KLF scenius member and brother Simon Cauty, found dead in suspicious circumstances in 2016 and a mass participation collective funeral rite slash art happening that will take about 300 years to complete. Feel free to buy a brick for my ashes if i cark it! The BD/JC collaboration lives on in this way, just never as the KLF itself, staying true to their commitment that the burning was the end.
Some of their post-KLF moves may have the curmudgeonly trappings of ‘old man yells at (fluffy little) cloud,’ but the silver thread of self-awareness running through it all makes even the clangers a bit lovable. Exhibit a. They got their US publisher Warner Chappel to try and sue Atkins for copyright infringement at one point during the making of his film, such was their insistence on not becoming a heritage act. Exhibit b. That Barbican performance called ‘Fuck the Millennium’ they did with Jeremy Deller was just, not quite it, but then what was in 1997? Now there’s a man whose art I have some complicated critical feelings about but also usually forgive because I fancy him. Related: the libidinal charge I experience watching certain footage of J.Cauty between 87-93 has surely moisturised my rusted root chakra through this particular period of intense hyperfocus. They never got heartthrob status despite appearing in most teen music mags my sister was buying for the Take That content, yet for my money, both JAMs were indeed sexy with it, in the manner that smart arse squatter lads with samplers, sambas, communiques, oil skin kagouls, interest in stone circles, outsize ambition and a seemingly inexhaustible budget for grand but futile gestures always will be. Should prob put that on a dating profile. Lord have mercy. ANYWAY!
The alternative title for the radio show was ‘Brutality, Religion and a Dance Beat’ which comes from the title of the split 7” that Bill’s first band Big in Japan did on Erics’ Records, put out a full decade before the KLF began. I loved the very Mumuian synchronicity in that, in line with his stated belief that all artists are really just trying to say one thing in many forms, from the day they’re born to the day they die.
Sheep, ley lines, sentient cars, fire, ice cream vans, islands, liverpool, conspiracy, stonehenge, ritual, pyramids and house music. Here’s to building your own ever more specific personal cosmology and the deep happiness to be found gazing at a universe of tiny sparkling obsessions. Be your own god.
My audio sources are here in 23am Eternal, this extra ‘Sources and Outtakes’ Youtube playlist (please watch ‘Rites of Mu’ its so beautiful and of course you need to hear the Hawkwind remix with the KLF guitar sound !!!) but for now my only demand is that you put on the robe provided and listen to my show.
Oh yeah, and the tracklist will be on instagram.