What Time Is Love?

23rd of August 2017 according to this poster which also states that ‘The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu are currently at work in their light industrial unit.’

K2 Plant Hire twitter here.

Bill Drummond on punk…

 

Pulling Out Of Ricardo And The Dusk Is Falling Fast

I don’t know about you but I could do with a lie down in a darkened room for a little while.

The KLF’s Chill Out, forty four minutes and twenty seconds long, recorded in one go by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, and released in February 1990, is a mythical drive through the night up the Gulf Coast from Texas into Louisiana. Bill Drummond said at the time he’d never been to those places, it was all in his head. If you want more about the background, samples, recording, track titles and whatnot there’s more here. But maybe it’s best just to press play and let go.

It seems wrong to let today go by without a tip of the trilby to Leonard Cohen.

‘Now I bid you farewell
I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow
To the tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby
Long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you softly
From a window in the tower of song’

Blue Danube

The KLF were self evidently one of the best things about the late 80s/early 90s. The fact that their stadium house was as brilliant as their philosophy, pranks, activities and statements is a massive bonus. On this mix of 3 a.m. Eternal The Orb, old muckers of Jimmy Cauty- in fact Cauty had started The Orb with Alex Paterson- turn stadium house back into ambient house.

3 a.m. Eternal (Blue Danube Orb Mix)

What Time Is Love?

It’s a long road from Liverpool’s punk scene and Big In Japan (a band described memorably recently on BBC4 as ‘less than the sum of their parts’) to global success with The KLF’s stadium house but it is the road Bill Drummond travelled between 1976 and 1991. He’s done much of interest since too but today’s post is about The KLF and their massive What Time Is Love?, remixed here by Austria’s Jurgen Koppers. Mu Mu.

What Time Is Love? (Power Mix)

Snubbed Again

The KLF- I don’t remember this interview so I must have missed this episode. I used to have a lot of them taped on VHS but they went the way of all tape and are probably landfill now. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, neither the easiest man to live with I reckon, made some fantastic records, provided a gateway to dance music for NME readers, had a good play around with notions of what it was to be a pop star and a musician, machine gunned the Brit awards, drove around the M25 for 25 hours and burnt a substantial sum of money. Bill Drummond continues to write thought provoking and interesting books. Jimmy Cauty has a vitriolic and slightly unsettling blog. All good fun.

Childish Forts

I got the new 7″ from Billy Childish’s latest group The Chatham Forts in the post while I was away. It’s very cool, sharp chords and plenty of vim, and featuring The KLF- Jimmy Cauty on bass and Bill Drummond on xylophone. Needless to say it doesn’t sound anything like The KLF. This has turned up on Youtube, not as angular as the single All Our Forts Are With You, but chugs away very well…

This was The KLF’s greatest moment, still sounding monumental 23 years later.

What Time Is Love?

Wild Billy Childish And The KLF

An recent email from Damaged Goods reveals another new Billy Childish band (The Chatham Forts) and a limited edition 7″ single in April. The new band sees Billy return to vocals and a ‘sound that is more akin to The Mighty Caesers / Headcoats with even a little of The Pop Rivets in there as well, a slightly angular, new wave approach’. 

So far, so good- nothing too unexpected though. The excitement and mind-boggling bit comes with the final line of the message- ‘We will have the album to follow in the summer……oh yeah, it also has Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond on it as well…that’s the KLF to you’.

Billy Childish and The KLF?! I know! And yet… what will it sound like? Garage rock crossed with stadium house? Or what? 

This song is from Bill Drummond’s solo lp The Man- a song named after Dumfries’ football team.

Queen Of The South

Sunday Orb

Minnie Riperton’s voice features heavily on this record too, so heavily she got a writing credit for the liberal use of her very well known, multi-octave Lovin’ You. The Orb’s A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld is a definitive slice of 1990 ambient dance dub, and to these ears The Orb’s stuff from this point sounds better and better as each year passes. Someone once wrote that this type of music at this time had a huge sense of possibility, that in the studio (often a bedroom) and on vinyl anything was now possible. As the dance scene fractured and split and people ploughed their own furroughs in the years afterwards that sense of possibility receded a bit. Written and recorded with The KLF’s Jimmy Cauty at Transcentral, this is eight and a bit minutes of open minded, open ended brilliance.

A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain That Rules From The Centre Of The Ultraworld (Orbital Dance Mix)

Please Try Again Later

Transit Kings are Dr. Alex Paterson, Jimmy Cauty and Guy Pratt of respectively The Orb, The KLF and bass sessionista/late era Pink Floyd, so you can probably imagine what this sounds like but don’t let that put you off. This is upbeat, nicely laid back electronic music with twinkly piano and guest guitar by Johnny Marr. He’s been popping up all over the place round here recently. Very pleasant, not as muso-ey as it could, and good for diverting your attention away from whatever’s sucking your soul out on Saturday night TV. Yeah, I know you don’t watch X Factor, it was your husband/wife/significant other who had it on…

America_Is_Unavailable.mp3

Acid Brass ‘What Time Is Love?’ (Version K)

We’ve been away this weekend just gone, and spent quite a bit of time in the car. I made a cd for in-car entertainment and put this on it, having re-discovered it recently. I’m pretty sure the mp3 came from Moggieboy over at Ripped In Glasgow originally, so thanks/apologies to Moggieboy for re-presenting it here. It has fast become a family favourite.

The KLF were surely made for the internet- destroying piles of albums that never got sample clearance, burning stacks of cash, deleting their entire back catalogue, retiring from the music business. Click/dig around a bit and it’s all out there. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty made inspired records, with even more inspired reasons for making the records. If you havn’t read them, and I know some of you have, any of Bill Drummonds books are worth reading, especially ’45’ and last years ’17’.

Jeremy Deller is also inspired. He famously re-enacted the Battle of Orgreave from the miner’s strike, recorded the Acid Brass album (you know, brass band versions of acid house hits) and last summer staged a procession through Manchester featuring scouts, goths, a musical fish and chip van, unrepentant smokers, mobile libraries, a hearse with a floral Hacienda and boy racers in souped up cars. With banners.

This then, to get to the point, is the Williams Fairey brass band (from Stockport) version of What Time Is Love? It is not a novelty track. It is an essential part of your download collection.

Parp parp par-par-par par-par-par-par par-par parp.

Acid Brass_What Time Is Love (Version K).mp3