SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO
21. THE KLF : Less is More
PART ONE
I WAS literally bouncing off the Midland hotel walls in a wretched stupor on a Tuesday morning. I'd been out since Monday teatime where I'd been to an In the City Basics night. That preceded being in a posh flat ingesting acid with a guy I didn't know from Adam, which preceded sipping beer in the lively hotel until breakfast which preceded bouncing off the walls in search of a toilet.
Alone then and bouncing off the walls, I startled a guy who was about to close his door but who was unfortunate in that he couldn't divert himself away from my attention. I cajoled him into making me a coffee as I fell into his room. He'd signed These Animal Men, but I didn't hold that against him. My ears well and truly pricked up when he said he was meeting up with the K Foundation later that afternoon. I wanted in but had six long hours to kill before their panel discussion and was already half-dead. Going back to my gaff in Withington for some shut eye was a no no as I wouldn't have reawakened. Instead, I hoped to score a cheap wrap of whizz back in the Midland. There I learned that middle-aged music industry types don't do cheap wraps of whizz.
By the time the K Foundation entered the building, I slumped across the bar and couldn't focus properly. Shielded from folk like me, but recognising that one shielder was John Robb, I found my feet and lurched towards Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond anyway to make my introduction. Only I didn't. I simply shook everyone's hand and slurred 'fucking ace' as I gestured towards my lighter. Had John Higgs's mind stretching book been out there, I might've had more to say but luckily it wasn't. I didn't stay for the discussion and didn't wash my right hand for days after.
I wish I'd been more reverent coz these two visionaries are true beacons of light. Never had I heard crickets chirping on an album until I put their groundbreaking Chill Out on the turntable.
PART TWO
THE KLF created in 2 days, armed with field recordings, samples, and punk in joking, a record that has intrigued us for over 3 decades. I picked up my copy in Probe and so built up a lot of anticipation on the journey home as I stared at its à la Floyd's sleeve wondrously. It's one of those albums that always puts a great big smile on my face as I reflect on the positivity associated with raving in 1989. Chill out music has since become synonymous with more linear beats and relaxing rhythms, for winding down to after a day in work, but the KLF made theirs for still being on, or coming down off drugs. Well, considering most folk the day after the rave.
However, never was I raving in a field. Once invited to one, but needed over thirty quid when I had just enough cash to buy a burger and board the last bus home. We scored our drugs off a white rasta at the Whitts on Drake Street in Rochdale.
He'd wear a garish shell-suit and walk around chewing his face intensely, saying in hush tones either 'Sensi, sunshines, strawberries' and we'd be all smiles, or 'Squidgy black, ohms' and we'd look properly worried. We always buggered off on the train to Mancunia, nibbling on our wares, but on this one occasion, encouraged to stay, we went further down the road, then to The Pub. Foolishly; we necked our drugs. All these mad-heads who sung along to American Pie pissed out of their trees were now full on raving.
The strobes were on, but all I could look at were the rottweilers pacing about, or folk whose smiles were twisting off their weathered middle-aged faces. I was confused and scared as there was no leaving there until the notorious owner wanted us out. Thankfully, after a terrible trip, it finally ended and any notion I had of ever raving in a field also ended.
Occasionally, the inside of my head would glaze over with musical snippets of the night before creeping out with the freshness of a warm sun while the small birds in the garden would be singing warmly, making life sound sweet. On this occasion, though, still disturbed by this lock-in rave I'd attended, I had to put on some ready-made music to drift off to. Thank God then for the KLF's debut album. Interwoven with samples, found material, and deep space programming, it's perfect for those fragmentary moments that really help blink out a bit of bliss before stepping back onto the carousel of life.
The trip I'm still on listening to this evokes a vast ancestor trod desert earth that slowly comes to life in a less distant past with Graham Lee's pedal steel guitar and the fractured samples that seem to flap about on an untuned nighttime radio. Sounding brilliantly sun-kissed but not site-specific. Their short film Waiting brings to life a soundtrack on the Isle of Jura which, with Ladyland era Hendrix, samples and harsh coastline noises, plays like a visual prequel to a rave that captures feelings of anticipation perfectly. The idiosyncratic £1000 a head, island rave, at what Orwell described as 'an extremely un-getatable place,' arrived a year later when they returned. I've envied attendee, Sarah Champion, ever since.
Cauty was the musician, and a bloody minded one at that. It was he who called time on the KLF at the peak of their power and he who wrote off ambient house despite coining the phrase himself. He had a point coz I actually bought a spare of his masterpiece Space in Our Price's sale bins. Arguably the best 3 quid I've ever spent. As conceptual as Chill Out, it works well as a companion piece that demands more of the imagination. The sleeve nods to the artwork of French Romanticism, the liberating force in classical music, to make a humorous point about his own planetary exploration. What he calls 'Music for 14 year old space cadets.' The press release unsurprisingly ends with the word plop.
Despite erasing all Alex Paterson's parts after splitting with the Orb, he made what was due to be their debut album his own. And all in the space of a working week. Jamming it out on analogue synths, sampling and looping classical elements, the album becomes a much sparser affair. Darker, deeper, and slowly becoming housier, the journey has aged spectacularly well and is probably the only record to encapsulate the term ambient house. It remains a groundbreaking record. Proving once again that less is more.
As much as I loved their art foundation, the unique ambient music they created with a candour and humility in Trancentral is what possessed me to want in. Unsurprisingly, ending with the word plop.
