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-based 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—rumored, 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 catalog—fitting for one of the most renegade careers in the history of dance music.