The KLF

The KLF (also known as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, furthermore known as the JAMs, the Timelords and other names) are a British electronic band who originated in Liverpool and London in the late 1980s. Scottish musician Bill Drummond (alias King Boy D) and English musician Jimmy Cauty (alias Rockman Rock) began by releasing hip hop-inspired and sample-heavy records as the JAMs. As the Timelords, they recorded the UK Singles Chart number-one single "Doctorin' the Tardis", and documented the process of making a hit record in a book The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way). As the KLF, Drummond and Cauty pioneered stadium house (rave music with a pop-rock production and sampled crowd noise) and, with their 1990 LP Chill Out, the ambient house genre. The KLF released a series of international hits on their own KLF Communications record label and became the biggest selling singles act in the world in 1991.

The KLF adopted the philosophy espoused by esoteric novels The Illuminatus! Trilogy, making anarchic situationist manifestations, including the defacement of billboard adverts, the posting of cryptic advertisements in New Musical Express (NME) and the mainstream press, as well as unusual performances on Top of the Pops. In collaboration with Extreme Noise Terror at the BRIT Awards in February 1992, they fired machine gun blanks into the audience and dumped a dead sheep at the aftershow party. This performance announced the KLF's departure from the music business and, in May of that year, they deleted their back-catalogue. Drummond and Cauty established the K Foundation and sought to subvert the art world, staging an alternative art award for the Worst Artist of the Year, and burning one million pounds sterling (approximately £2.35m or €2.75m as of 2022).

The duo have released a small number of new tracks since 1992, as the K Foundation, the One World Orchestra, and in 1997, as 2K. Drummond and Cauty reappeared in 2017 as the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, releasing the novel 2023, and rebooting an earlier campaign to build a "People's Pyramid". In January 2021, the band began uploading their deleted catalogue onto streaming services, in compilations.

History

Background

Bill Drummond was an established figure within the British music industry, having co-founded Zoo Records, played guitar in the Liverpool band Big in Japan, and worked as manager of Echo & the Bunnymen and the Teardrop Explodes. Artist and musician Jimmy Cauty was the guitarist in the three-piece Brilliant – an act that Drummond had signed to WEA Records and managed.

In July 1986, Drummond resigned from his position as an A&R man at record label WEA, citing that he was nearly 33⅓ years old (33⅓ revolutions per minute being 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". In the same year he released a solo LP, The Man. Drummond intended to focus on writing books once The Man had been issued but, as he recalled in 1990, "That only lasted three months, until I had an[other] idea for a record and got dragged back into it all". Recalling that moment in a later interview, Drummond said that the plan came to him in an instant: he would form a hip-hop band with former colleague Cauty, and they would be called the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu: