The KLF - Chill Out

The KLF were a British band, pioneers of electronic and ambient music in the early 90's. Though they were predominantly working in the field of electronica, the control they maintained over their own art and their distaste for the corporate music business is probably unparalleled in music history. In 1990, they released Chill Out, one of the most influential and kickass ambient albums put to record. Check this out: 


Their first record sampled ABBA who promptly sued the band for unauthorised use. After confronting ABBA in their recording studio, the band burnt all the copies of the record in a field. They then went back to the drawing board and made an ambient album ‘Chill Out’ and then the house classic ‘The White Room’ before finally appearing at The Brit Awards violently firing blanks from an automatic rifle into the audience, causing mayhem in the area. Later in the evening the band dumped a dead sheep with the message "I died for ewe—bon appetit" tied around its waist at the entrance to one of the post-ceremony parties. Then they dropped out of the music business almost immediately, burning all of their back catalog (which remains unavailable and out of print to this day). Their statuette for "best british group" of 1992 was found buried in a field near Stonehenge. 

"We have been following a wild and wounded, glum and glorious, shit but shining path these past five years. The last two of which has [sic] led us up onto the commercial high ground—we are at a point where the path is about to take a sharp turn from these sunny uplands down into a netherworld of we know not what. For the foreseeable future there will be no further record releases from The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords, The KLF and any other past, present and future name attached to our activities. As of now all our past releases are deleted.... If we meet further along be prepared...our disguise may be complete" 

With The KLF's profits, 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..

An insight from a fellow rymer:


Taking cues from Brian Eno’s early ambient records, ‘Chill Out’ seems to simulate a night time road trip across southern USA highways while you have the radio on low because everyone else in the car is fast asleep; it’s enveloping bliss. Some of the tracks don’t even have any melody in them, but they all add to the dreamy ambiance of it all. You can hear train-crossings, birds, engines, even sheep; why some of them are in there is anyone’s guess, but like The Orb’s classic debut, ‘Chill Out’ has a great sense of humour bundled with it which means that there’s always something to take you by surprise. ‘Chill Out’ is also heavily indebted to sampling; the strains of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Albatross’ and Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger On The Shore’ aren’t disguised in any way, but they don’t really steal their melodies; ‘Chill Out’ isn’t about melodies. It’s all about atmosphere and that’s exactly what the samples provide. As the ‘Albatross’ snippet fades in slowly, you can see yourself sipping coffee parked in a petrol station watching the traffic spin round in the pouring rain.

I strongly doubt there has ever been (or will ever be) a record like this. Though The Orb’s ‘U.F.Orb’ came close, ‘Chill Out’ still exceeds it in nearly every aspect. A transcendant, transporting highway wilderness. In a bizarre change of plan, the year after ‘Chill Out’ was released, The KLF had more UK hit singles than anyone else that year, then the year after that they withdrew one million pounds from their bank account, nailed it to a board of wood, then burnt it. That weird stunt may have shown their madness, but ‘Chill Out’ shows their genius.


Madrugada Eterna