The KLF

Artist Playlists

About The KLF

The KLF were pioneers: They helped rave music shoulder its way to the top of the UK charts, and they delivered an album-length ambient-house classic with 1990’s Chill Out. More than anything else, though, they espoused the notion that pop stardom itself could be an art form, using outlandish hijinks (defacing billboards, burning a million pounds) to bolster their notoriety. The London duo of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty formed in 1987 as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu. Recording as The Timelords, they managed to hit No. 1 with 1988’s “Doctorin’ the Tardis”, a mash-up of the Doctor Who theme with Sweet and Gary Glitter, and promptly authored a tongue-in-cheek how-to guide to writing hit songs. That year, they rechristened themselves The KLF—rumoured, but never confirmed, to stand for Kopyright Liberation Front—and threw themselves into the burgeoning acid-house movement with euphoric anthems like “What Time Is Love?” and “3AM Eternal”. Then, having distilled all the sprawling energy of rave into four-minute doses of pop perfection, they called it quits in 1992 and deleted their back catalogue—fitting for one of the most renegade careers in the history of dance music.

ORIGIN
Liverpool, England
FORMED
1988
GENRE
Electronic
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