Monday's Long Song

KiF Productions are a two man team based in Devon who have recorded a homage to The KLF's legendary ambient house masterpiece Chill Out. The update is titled Still Out and transplants Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond's imaginary journey across the American south to a British road trip from North Yorkshire to North Devon the pair took in 2024. Tom and Will recorded Still Out after finding a copy of Chill Out in Tom's dad's record collection and put it together in a remote cottage in Devon, with no internet or mobile signal. They created an ambient audio collage, cutting and pasting found sounds and musical sounds, inspired not just by The KLF but by Philip Glass, Brian Eno, Andrew Weatherall, The Bomb Squad, Bill Evans and Virginia Astley. It's out at the end of the month, two long tracks either side of a record (the vinyl is long since sold out but the digital is available). 

The first is Swaledale To Blakeney Straits, a long ambient drone and the pips from the radio, a female voice wafts in and there's some crackle, a haze of ambient bliss, everything happening slowly. Organ. A finger picked acoustic guitar, birdsong. An excerpt of Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood. More haze, more slow guitar notes. Then a car door opens and the engine starts and we're off, on the road... 

As in Chill Out there are trains passing by, the car waiting at a level crossing. Warbling and more drones. It's a very British sounding road trip, back roads through the countryside, all the while the ambient drone bathing everything in a warm light. Also as with Chill Out Elvis turns up. After quarter of an hour the ambient synths push to the fore, a gentle wordless choir and chanting voice make their way in, a flute appears and some very Sabres Of Paradise drums clank in, a rattling metallic echo. We shift through different phases, the journey south soundtracked by bubbling water and descending chimes. 

Side two/ track two is Laugharne Estuary To Welcombe Mouth, more wild birdsong and the car's tyres on the road, engine turning over, more Burton reading Dylan Thomas, gulls... then a bassline, some piano jazz and a sax, bleeps and whooshes, drums, double bass and a warm electric guitar for a minute or two, more drones, sunshine breaking though clouds... 

Still Out is more than just a homage to a thirty five year old album, it stands alone in its own right, two inventive and ever changing pieces of sound collage. There are films too to accompany the sounds, shot from inside the car. Everything can be found at KiF Productions' Bandcamp page. 

Monday's Long Songs

Something else from the Eclectics label to kick start the week- see yesterday's edits mix that included No- Thing, a tribute to David Lynch by Resident Rockers, Eclectics in house DJ/ edit producers. Grant Williams relaunched Eclectics a few weeks ago and one of the first fruits was a track he recorded while on the turntables. In his own words an 'experimental fun track' with the emphasis on experimental and the fun of the mind melting variety. Voices is eight and a half minutes of wiggy, tripped out electronic psychedelia, 'a slowed down tech track, the vocals grabbed [from elsewhere] matched the bpm and I played the two simultaneously in sync and then messed about with the vocals in real time'. Grant then added more delay and echo and recorded it live in one take. Titled Voices, its free to download at Bandcamp under the Resident Rockers name. 

Also out now and slightly more direct but equally good fun is Blavatsky And Tolley's latest release, four tracks for Berlin label Nein. Falling (What Time Is Love?) is ten minutes of slow mo intensity, electronic disco- punk featuring Gene Serene, a certain KLF keyboard riff contained within, and remixes by Tronik Youth, Ian Vale and Ed Tomlinson. The original mix is slowed down and souped up, the stuttering, robotic vocal intoning 'deeper and deeper', a ghost in the machine. Falling comes out in early March- find it and pre- order at Bandcamp. 

Bagging Area Book Club Chapter Two

Since last summer I've read four novels by Benjamin Myers, the four pictured above. Myers is a writer, author and journalist who has published fiction, non- fiction and poetry as well as writing for various magazines- NME, Melody Maker, Mojo, The Guardian, The Quietus, Time Out and more (he's also contributed to the excellent Weird Walk zine which I'll come back to another time in this series). He's from Durham and currently lives in the Calder Valley. Music forms a backdrop to or an intersection with a lot of his work and it was via music that I first encountered his writing. 

The first of his books I read was The Perfect Golden Circle, a book I consumed from the sun lounger by the pool in Greece last July. It's a magical book, one of those completely self contained novels that you don't want to finish but can't stop reading. It's set in the hot summer of 1989, a summer where a series of crop circles appeared in fields across the south of England. Those crop circles are the work of two men, the classic odd couple, Redbone and Calvert (one a free party, peace convoy hippie- punk who lives in a van, the other an SAS veteran left reeling and scarred by the Falklands War). The two men plan and carry out the creation of crop circles through the summer, their work becoming more ambitious with every circle completed, building towards their moment of perfection- although according to Redbone the truly perfect circle does not exist, 'it can only exist as an idea'. The book feels like the summer of '89, but it goes wider and deeper, the novel a poetic reckoning with the English countryside, the history contained within it, English folk traditions, and the natural world. The Latin phrase Dum spiro spero (While I breathe, I hope) appears near the start of the story, tattooed on the arm of one of the two crop circle creators- both men in the novel are looking for something to keep them going, both living on the fringes of society, and finding something in an unexpected friendship and the crop circles that they've devoted themselves to. 

In my mind crop circles are connected to The KLF- I'm pretty sure that Drummond and Cauty created one with their ghetto blaster and pyramid design at the centre. 

What Time Is Love (Techno Scam Mix)

After The Perfect Golden Circle I read The Offing and enjoyed it just as much, another completely absorbing book with fully realised characters. The Offing is set in a summer not long after the end of the Second World War. Robert Appleyard, 16 years old, sets off on foot to find work, walking away from a Durham colliery village and coal mining, trying to find something, anything, that doesn't involve going underground. His journey takes him by chance to Dulcie Piper, a middle aged woman living alone in a ramshackle cottage, who takes him in, offering food and a bed in exchange for gardening toil. She also provides him with conversation, swear words and poetry, and encourages him to go to university. Dulcie's ex- lover, a German poet Romy Landau, becomes a presence and the story hinges around the circumstances of Romy's death and a manuscript of Romy's Robert discovers. The offing is the point where sea and sky merge on the horizon- the book is the story of a transition, of a place where two things meet (the two people of the tale and Robert's transition from childhood to the adult world), a summer where things change. 

Last autumn I tackled The Gallows Pole. The characters from the novel (and history) were televised by Shane Meadows (who bought many of the cast of his This Is England series with him for The Gallows Pole). The Gallows Pole is historical fiction, based around the real life 'King' David Hartley of Cragg Vale (buried in Heptonstall churchyard, not far from Sylvia Plath's grave). In the late 18th century the Cragg Vale Coiners began counterfeiting coins, clipping the edges from the currency, melting the clippings and then producing their own counterfeit coins. They were so successful that they almost crashed the British economy. The coiners operated in an isolated world, West Yorkshire, where unemployment and threat of starvation were ever present. In Shane Meadows' dramatisation for TV there are meetings on the moor with men with stag's heads and a swirling psyche rock soundtrack from the likes of 70s rockers The Groundhogs and Swedish psyche band Goat. Hartley is portrayed as a hero, a man who has returned to save his community and be re- united with the woman he left behind. In Myers' novel Hartley is a much more dangerous character, violent and oppressive. The book switches between styles- narrative sections, chapters in the first person from Hartley's point of view (in prison awaiting trial) and from the view of Deighton, an official charged with bringing the group to justice, and from the viewpoint of James Broadbent, a coiner turned informant. It's a dense and epic tale, Myers bringing the late 1700s to life, a world where petty theft carried the death penalty, where the weather and the Yorkshire hills are a glowering presence, and where crime and community come together. 

The Shining Levels, an alt- folk group from the north east of England, were so inspired by The Gallows Pole, that they wrote and recorded a soundtrack for the novel. The album marries folk and electronics,  loops and synths and drones. This track, ghostly and slightly unnerving, opens the album...

Stag Dance

Goat's album that soundtracked Shane Meadows' BBC series came out on vinyl for Record Shop Day earlier this year. The digital version can be found here. 

The fourth of Ben Myers' novels that I've read is Cuddy, a visionary telling of the story of St. Cuthbert, patron saint of the north of England, told over a thousand years. The story is as much about the north of England and the area around Durham, where Cuddy's remains are interred in a grave behind the altar in the cathedral. Cuddy's life in 7th century England took him from shepherd boy to monk, and life as a hermit on Lindisfarne. Attacks by Vikings led the monks at the monastery to move his remains, ending up in what would become Durham cathedral. Myers' book is split into four stories- it starts with the monks on the road with Cuddy's coffin, told by a devotee called Ediva, the text often breaking into chants and prayers. The second story moves to 1346 (the year before the Black Death arrived in England, something that struck Myers as relevant when writing in the summer of 2020 during Covid). Fletcher Bullard is home from war, an archer and domestic abuser. In Medieval Durham Bullard's wife meets Francis Rolfe, a stone mason working on the cathedral and things unravel. The third story jumps to the 19th century and an Oxford professor who has been invited to Durham to witness and record the opening of Cuthbert's tomb, a ghost story that brings the spectres of chanting monks into the 19th century. The fourth part of Cuddy is set in 2019, a young man caring for a dying mother and working in the 21st century, cash in hand, zero hours economy. He lands a job at Durham cathedral where he finds people and a place that he was excluded from previously, his eyes opened by the resting place of St. Cuthbert. As in The Perfect Golden Circle and The Offing, Cuddy is about land and nature, the elements, the north's history and the past impinging on the present as well as the characters Myers' creates. Cuddy is epic in scope and range, impressionistic in parts, poetic but also earthy and gritty, about real people and their lives.  

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

On Thursday 23rd November 2023 The KLF re- appeared with a website KLF Kare (providing 'branding solutions to independently owned care homes'), a song (a cover/ version/ premix of Harry Nillson's Everybody's Talkin' At Me, with Ricardo Da Force on vocals and a lengthy introductory sample from Top of The Pops. You can hear it here) and in Toxteth, Liverpool a night time event including the laying of bricks for The People's Pyramid, a procession across the Mersey and an afterparty at Future Yard in Birkenhead. 23rd November 2023 was always likely to be a day of KLF action, the number 23 being highly significant in KLF world and Discordianism and 23rd November being significant previously in KLF activities. 

The 23rd November was also Isaac's birthday and the age he was when he died. I've written before about 23 and Isaac, including the fact that I was reading John Higgs' book about the KLF when he died and how when I picked the book up a few weeks later, the first chapter I read was about the importance of 23 to The KLF and in Discordianism. When I woke up on Thursday, which was a really tough day all round, I found The KLF in my various social media feeds, the above 23 graphic jumping out at me. A couple of weeks ago a friend sent me a photograph of the famous KLF ice cream van, which turned up at a KLF event she attended, the number 23 emblazoned on its side. I left a comment on one of her posts, coincidentally (or not) 23 minutes after she posted it. Etc etc etc. 

Today's Sunday mix therefore suggested itself- demanded itself really. 

Forty Five Minutes Of The KLF

• I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll
• Jerusalem On The Moors
• Kylie Said To Jason (Full length Version)
• Justified And Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)
• 3 a.m. Eternal (Blue Danube Orbital)
• It's Grim Up North Part 1
• Last Train To Trancentral (White Room Version)
• What Time Is Love? Live At Trancentral (Radio Edit)

I Believe In Rock 'n' Roll is from Bill Drummond's solo album The Man, an album recorded and released by Creation in 1986 when he was 33.3 years old and ready for 'a revolution in my life'. This song is fairly self explanatory and contains lyrical and musical references that would appear in his public life thereafter- pedal steel guitar (Chill Out), Penkiln Burn (his website) and his belief that Elvis is king among them. 

Jerusalem On the Moors was the fourth track on the CD single release of It's Grim Up North, a weatherblasted orchestral take that fades into techno. It's Grim Up North was recorded as The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and released as a single in 1991, a list of northern towns set to industrial  techno, two men with the world at feet and the freedom to do whatever they wanted to. It's Grim Up North Part 1 is ten minutes long, starting out lyrically in Bolton and ending in Cleethorpes, taking in Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Kirkby, Kearsley, Keighley, Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs, Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge, Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St Annes, Clitheroe, Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheadle, Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington, Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ilkley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Halifax, Bingley, Bramhall and the M62 in between. 

The KLF released Kylie Said To Jason in 1989, the only survivor from the pair's road trip film, The White Room, with the titular stars of Neighbours and SAW set to a track that is the full fruits of Drummond and Cauty's Pet Shop Boys obsession. It was designed to sell bucket loads of records and establish The KLF in the charts. It failed to make the top 100. 

Justified And Ancient was released as a single on 25th November 1991 and while typing this I see that this is today's date, thirty two years later, which wasn't planned but doesn't surprise me either. Do you need me to explain the genius of this song, of Tammy Wynette, stadium house, King Boy D, Rockman Rock and an ice cream van, all bound for Mu Mu Land? You do not. Bring the beat back. 

3 a.m. Eternal was The KLF's second monster, a top ten hit. This mix from the 12", the Blue Danube Orbital Mix, is by The Orb, a sound collage/ ambient house version and sounds like part of Chill Out that went missing and resurfaced, the Blue Danube waltz section in the middle the interruption to the chilled out bliss. 

Last Train To Trancentral was a single in 1990, released as per in multiple versions and mixes, Pure Trance, Live From The Lost Continent, Iron Horse and several others. This is The White Room version, from the album with rap from Ricardo da Force and vocals from Black Steel, Maxine Harvey and Wanda Dee. Trancentral is The KLF's spiritual home, a place they were bound for, Mu Mu Land, the lost continent. It was also their recording studio in Stockwell, south London (also Jimmy Cauty's squat)

I had to include What Time Is Love?, in many ways the definitive KLF song, a genuine acid house classic, one that straddles borders and slips into The Live At Trancentral Version came out in 1990, an extraordinary moment of brilliance as the sincere, surreal and chaotic world of Drummond and Cauty collided with mainstream culture and the stadium house trilogy went overground. The radio Edit here brings this mix in at just shy of forty five minutes and so would fit on one side of a c90 cassette. As the beats hammer away, the siren blares and the rave riff repeats, let me ask you a question... 

Forty Six Minutes Of Twenty Three

Two months ago this weekend, the day before we were taking Eliza back to Liverpool for her final year in university, the three of us were sitting in a cafe in Didsbury village, one of our afternoon walk and a brew haunts. Eliza said, out of nowhere, 'I think we should all go and get a number 23 tattoo for Isaac'. Lou and I looked at each other and both said, 'yeah. ok'. It was very spontaneous, none of us ever really thought abut getting a tattoo before. Me and Eliza had joked about but very much in a 'we won't ever do this' kind of way. But at that moment it suddenly seemed like a good thing to do. Unfortunately the tattoo parlour in Sale couldn't fit us in on the day so we booked in for a month later- it felt like something the three of us should do together and Eliza didn't want to come back from Liverpool for a while. It also gave us some time to think about fonts and parts of the body.

The number 23 has become associated with Isaac. I've written about it before this year. He was 23 when he died and his birthday is the 23rd November (just a couple of weeks away now with the 2nd anniversary of his death a week later). In the last year the number 23 has kept appearing in front of me- on street signs, graffiti, electricity boxes, random tv countdown shows suddenly channel surfed onto, the only available table in a pub. I don't think it necessarily means anything- it's just something I've started noticing and when I see a 23 now it makes me think of him and smile. Getting a 23 tattoo might trigger the same reaction (and a month later, I'm happy to say it does). We got the tattoos done a month ago. Mine is pictured above, a type writer font on my forearm. Lou got a smaller 23 on her side and Eliza got an even smaller, fine line 23 on her upper arm. 

The number 23 has a rich history. I've written before as well about it's part in KLF mythology, with their interest in Discordianism and numerology. When Isaac died I was reading John Higgs' book about The KLF. A few weeks after he died I picked the book back up and the first chapter I read was about the significance of 23. I finished the chapter and put the book down, totally freaked about. I read it again the next day and it had a similar effect. When I was looking at fonts for my tattoo I thought about a KLF block 23 but it would very inky and take some time to do. I fancied a type writer font. On the morning we were due to go I suddenly wondered what 23 would look like in a factory/ Peter Saville font and started going through my various Factory art books. What, I asked myself, was Fac 23? A quick search later and I realised Fac 23 was the 7" release of Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division. Which caused me to stop in my tracks for a moment. In the end I didn't quite go full Peter Saville Fac font but it played a part in my thinking. We're all really glad we got them done. At the moment, all autumn chilliness and long sleeves, its often covered up, but when I see it, it makes me smile. The upcoming anniversaries are weighing quite heavily and I'll be glad to get November over with- but the tattoos feel like a positive and I'm not sure a year ago I'd thought that would be possible. 

This mix is 46 minutes of songs connected to the number 23. I was going to bring it in at 23 minutes but that felt too short so went for double 23. Two of the songs below were also released in full 23 minute versions which felt too long for a Sunday mix but they're here in shorter versions to represent their 23 minute long brothers. 

46 Minutes Of 23

• Chris Rotter And The Bad Meat Club: 86'd
• 10:40: Sleepwalker
• Local Psycho And The Hurdy Gurdy Orchestra: The Hurdy Gurdy Song (Mothers Of The New Stone Age Remix)
• 23 Skidoo: Coup
• Jah Division: Jah Will Tear Us Apart
• The Vendetta Suite: Eye In The Triangle
• Two Lone Swordsmen: 23rd Street
• Mogwai: U235
• Gorillaz: Aries
• Psychic TV: Godstar
• The KLF: 3am Eternal

Chris Rotter was the guitarist in the live band incarnation of Two Lone Swordsmen and played on and co- wrote songs on Andrew Weatherall's solo album A Pox On The Pioneers. I became friends with Chris online and then in real life. When Isaac died he wanted to record a song for Isaac. I asked him to do 86'd, a song I heard Andrew play on a radio show, a glorious chiming krauty instrumental. Chris went and re- recorded 86'd in new form, 23 minutes long. For reasons of space I've included the shorter one here. The full length 86'd (For Isaac) is here. 

Last December Jesse represented the entire 10:40 back catalogue as an advent calendar. This was the track for the 23rd December, the sleek psych and somewhat krauty Sleepwalker with Ben Lewis on guitar.

The KLF and the number 23 I've mentioned above. Read John Higgs' Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds for more detail. Local Psycho And The Hurdy Gurdy Orchestra are ex- KLF Jimmy Cauty and ex- Pogue Jem Finer. Their hurdy gurdy, neolithic celebration drone came out on 12" came out earlier this year complete with a 23 minute mix. I've included the shorter remix here but the 23 minute version is the one really. 

23 Skidoo are here for obvious reasons. Coup is a block rocking post- punk/ punk funk track from 1984. In a further Andrew Weatherall connection, it was one of the songs on his 9 O' Clock Drop compilation from 2000. 

Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart, as I said above, was Fac 23. Factory's numbering system was central to their ethos. All Joy Division and New Order singles ended in 3. Rather than include the original I decided to put Jah Division's dub cover in- it fitted better. Jah Division released an EP of four dub covers of Joy Division songs  in 2004. If you ever see a vinyl copy, please give me a ring. 

The Vendetta Suite are from Northern Ireland, the work of Gary Irwin. In 2017 Gary released an EP titled Solar Lodge 23 from which this piece of cosmic dubbiness is taken. 

Two Lone Swordsmen- yes, them again- released their first record in 1996, a 12" that contained four tracks- Big Man On The Landing, Azzolini, The Branch Brothers and the one here, 23rd Street, a few minutes of abstract Swordsmen sounds. 

Mogwai's move into soundtrack work has paid off. This is from the soundtrack to Atomic, a bit of a cheat maybe numerically but 23's in there and the track fits.

Gorillaz have played with the number 23 frequently in their imagery and artwork. This song Aries was a single in 2020 and has the unmistakeable and melancholic/ uplifting sound of Peter Hook's bass at its heart.  

Psychic TV, Genesis P Orridge's experimental psychedelic/ acid house band had some interest in 23. In 1986 they began a series of gigs to be recorded and released, 23 in total, each played on the 23rd of a month for 23 consecutive months. Godstar is a single from 1985, a tribute to Rolling Stone Brian Jones.

The KLF's 3am Eternal was the second of their stadium house trilogy, released in 1991 (after a previous version in 1989 and a subsequent one in 1992). The version here, the 1991 single and chart topper, took this mix to 46 minutes. 

Monday's Long Song

My ongoing, erm, relationship (for want of a better word) with the number 23 continues. The walk up the canal towpath into town that I did a couple of times in the summer saw me come across a pair of graffiti 23s- from memory they were the only numbers among the many painted and tagged walls (apart from a 2-1 reference to the cup final, proper old school graffiti). I'm aware that confirmation bias means they may be the only numbers I noticed and that I might be looking out for them, subconsciously. The pair of graffiti 23s don't seem to be the work of the same artist. When we were in South London for the end of August bank holiday weekend we walked up the high street to get to the train station, turned a corner and I almost walked into this piece of street furniture...

At the start of the summer my brother in law and sister in law stayed the night with us before flying from Manchester airport. We went to one of the local pubs and while I stood at the bar ordering they went to find a table. More or less the only one free was this one...

Channel surfing one night I flicked the button and moved up from Channel 4 and onto a Channel 5 countdown of the Best Songs Of 1986 at this exact moment...

I don't think there's anything especially mystical about this. It's coincidence I'm sure. Other numbers appear all around us, I just don't notice them the same way. 

Isaac was twenty three when he died and his birthday is the 23rd November (we have that anniversary and the anniversary of his death (a week later, the 30th November) suddenly appearing in our view again. Both those dates last year were awful, the weeks building up to them especially. When he went into hospital in November 2021 with Covid I was a few chapters into Chaos, Magic And The Band Who Burned A Million Pounds by John Higgs, a book about The KLF. I didn't pick it up again until a few weeks after he died and the first chapter I then read was about the number 23, its place in The KLF's mythology and the significance of the number in Discordianism (a religion or set of ideas invented by Greg Hill and Kerry Wendell Thornley in the early 1960s, taking in some aspects of Zen coupled with absurdism and beliefs/ theories about order and disorder. You can get as much or as little from it as you like. The KLF take a lot from it but with them its always difficult to tell whether they're deadly serious or playing). What freaked me out reading the chapter back in December 2021, wracked with grief and loss and pain, was the number 23 and its concurrence with Isaac's life and death. After that, I started seeing twenty threes fairly often, not least this summer. Again, I know about confirmation bias and suspect that twenty three is a fairly commonly occurring number. But also, I've come to like it when I see one, it makes me smile- the only rule is that seeing or finding one has to be accidental, it can't happen as a result of deliberately looking for them- in some ways, it feels like a weird little connection to him.  

Jimmy Cauty of The KLF and Jem Finer of The Pogues have released an EP, four versions of a track titled The Hurdy- Gurdy Song, calling themselves Local Psycho And The Hurdy- Gurdy Orchestra. The three versions on the A-side of the 12" are all fairly short, between three and six minutes long, ambient/ rave celebrating the ancient and the current, the old stones that decorate our landscape and the year 2023. The B-side of the 12" is taken up entirely with The Stone Club Remix, a long version that is twenty three minutes long (of course it is). 

The Stone Club Remix is long with a very drawn out intro, bleeps, drones, the specific broken bagpipe- like drone of the hurdy- gurdy front and centre, noises, seagulls, a voice talking about the stones and about 'being the custodians of this place', echoes, found sound. Eventually, about thirteen minutes in a rhythm appears, drums of some sort, tapping away in the reverb smothered distance, through a haze. 

The EP is available at Bandcamp, digitally and on vinyl (although the vinyl was running very low when I wrote this post). Initially there were three hundred 12" singles in sleeves hand painted by Cauty and two hundred in plain sleeves. Two and three again. 

Ten Leaves On A River Bank

One of the books I read on holiday was Tracey Thorn's My Rock 'n' Roll Friend, an account of Tracey's friendship with Lindy Morrison. Tracey first met Lindy backstage at a gig. Lindy marched into Everything But The Girl's dressing room looking for lipstick- Tracey describe's Lindy's entrance, Lindy depicted as a force of nature. She goes on to describe and dissect her thirty seven year friendship with Lindy and her part in story of The Go- Betweens. As the book goes on Tracy seethes with righteous anger about Lindy's role and position in the Australian band, how Lindy has been written out of the group's history- by journalists and when they reformed in 2000 by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan (a group she joined in 1980 and was an essential part of as a three piece and then five piece). Tracy articulates the way the music press played down Lindy's role, how it was often portrayed as being all about the two men, the songwriting partnership. Lindy was a key part in the band, not least visually- a tall, blonde, unconventional drummer playing behind two bookish men. 

The Go- Betweens moved to London, finding it a miserable, unfriendly, cold and wet place. They lived with Nick Cave and The Birthday Party- no one worked except Lindy, the men all falling into a life of being artists sitting around taking drugs and waiting for songwriting inspiration to strike. Lindy and Robert are in a relationship which implodes (and so does the band, the two men ending it in spectacularly sexist fashion, Robert sacking Lindy as simultaneously Grant sacked his girlfriend Amanda Brown- and was then surprised when Amanda left him). As I read the book I cringed slightly, wondering if I'd fallen into the same (male) trap when writing about The Go- Betweens. 

It's also a book about friendship and affection, the nature of female friendships especially, about connections and the passage of time, about the wild, frank and outgoing Lindy and the reserved and more cautious Tracey and what attracted them to each other. Lindy is the member of The Go- Betweens who is the most rock 'n' roll but as a woman she's criticised for her behaviour. She came from a feminist punk background and music journalists are terrified of her and describe her in ways they never would men. There is much food for thought within its pages. 

It's a book which requires little or no knowledge of anyone's bands either, of The Go- Betweens or Everything But The Girl, although it sits very well with having read Tracey's Bedsit Disco Queen and Robert Forster's Grant and I (Forster's book and its title alone support much of what Tracy is saying, Lindy once again written out of the story). Tracey writes really well, is incisive, self- aware and analytical. She is fairly fearless too in addressing aspects of relationships, her own as well as Lindy's. 

This song is on the 1984 album Spring Hill Fair, recorded in France. Producer John Brand used programmed drums on many of the songs and trying to get her to play to a click track which led to conflict with Lindy, conflict she didn't back away from. 

Draining The Pool For You

The second book I read was a novel, Benjamin Myers' The Perfect Golden Circle. It is the best novel I've read in years, an atmospheric, fully realised story of two men in the summer of 1989. One is Calvert, a traumatised Falklands veteran. The other is Redbone, a cider- punk veteran of free parties at Stonehenge and the Battle of the Beanfield living in a van. Their friendship is the core of the novel. In 1989 they are in their third summer of creating corn circles and through the long, hot summer of 89 they plan and carry off increasingly bold and intricate designs in farmer's fields in the south of England. Myers goes off into various places as the book unfolds, returning to the two men and the almost mystical aspects of their crop circles. It's a gentle and insightful book, beautifully written, poetic in parts and with characters that stick in the mind when the book is put down. 

In 1990 Led Zeppelin released a compilation box set with crop circles on the cover. I shared a house with someone who bought it and the front cover was eye catching even if I didn't care much for the music. On the whole I can live without Led Zeppelin- I like some of the first album and the folky, mystical songs on the third are good- but its a type of music that doesn't do a massive amount for me. Priapic cock rock- I can imagine Tracey and Lindy discussing it in those kinds of terms. I have a fondness for Kashmir though, ridiculous as it is. Maybe its the ridiculousness that appeals. 

Kashmir

Crop circles are probably better connected with The KLF. I'm sure Redbone in The Perfect Golden Circle would be a KLF fan. Kylie Said To Jason came out in July 1989, at the height of crop circle mania

Kylie Said To Jason (Full Length Version)

Twenty Three

Back in November last year, a week or two before Isaac died, I started reading a book about The KLF by John Higgs titled 'The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned A Million Pounds'. It is not a conventional band biography- Higgs supplies two different endings (read both, decide which one you prefer) and as someone somewhere quipped, at times the book is more a history of Discordianism with appearances by The KLF as much as the story of Bill Drummond, Jimmy Cauty and their adventures in the music industry. 

Discordianism is/ was one of the foundation stones of Drummond and Cauty's world, the modern day religion of chaos and irreverence dreamed up by Greg Hill and Kerry Wendall Thornley in 1963. Higgs brings in much more as well and branches off all over the place- Situationism, Dr Who, punk, rave, Carl Jung and Dada all show up. It's difficult to tell at times, and I think this is one of Higgs' key points, whether Drummond and Cauty know what they are doing and whether they are in control of what they unleash or whether the magical forces of Discordia and the Illuminati have taken over completely. I've always found it difficult to tell whether Drummond and Cauty are deadly serious or playing with it. Either way, it leads them to The Brits in February 1992 where they machine gunned the audience while Extreme Noise Terror thrashed away behind them, to having to be talked out of dumping a dead sheep on the steps of the venue and then to the Isle of Jura where they burned a million quid. Something they've been unable to explain (to themselves or others) ever since. 

The KLF v Extreme Noise Terror 3 A.M. Eternal (Top Mix)

When Isaac got taken into hospital with Covid I was a few chapters in. I didn't pick the book up for a while after all of that but at some point went back to it and almost immediately found myself in the chapter on Discordianism and specifically the number twenty three. Discordianism a parody religion. Probably. One of it's central practices is/ was Operation Mindfuck, an attempt to undermine all conspiracy theories by publicly attributing major events (wars, assassinations etc) to the Illuminati, thereby demonstrating how ridiculous conspiracy theories are- while also contributing to paranoia and creating more conspiracy theories. 

For Discordians the number twenty three is everything, the secret behind it all. The number five is also important because two and three make five and two and three are twenty three. William Burroughs cited the so called 23 Enigma to Robert Anton Wilson in an interview (Wilson wrote the Illuminatus! Trilogy). Drummond and Cauty took their name The JAMMs from the books and twenty three is littered through The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu and The KLF's works. Drummond and Cauty burned the money on the twenty third of August and then agreed to not discuss it for twenty three years. This is where you suspect they're playing with it- except burning a million pounds is not playing. 

In a normal frame of mind all of this would have been amusing and interesting but in my raw and grief stricken state it fully freaked me out. Isaac was twenty three when he died and his birthday is on the twenty third of November. One of his birthday presents we'd given to him a week earlier, on the twenty third, was a United shirt with his name on the back and the number twenty three beneath it. The shirt was already with him, in his coffin. I put the book down and the day after- I don't remember exactly when this was but I think it was some time in December. The day after I picked the book up and read the chapter again and it disturbed me again. Moreso when I looked at my phone to see what time it was and it was, of course, 23.23pm. It disturbed me for some time afterwards- but then I was already very disturbed and it didn't take much to tip me over. There were a couple of other Isaac numerological coincidences around the same time which added to it all. 

Robert Anton Wilson, the writer and philosopher recognised in Discordianism as a saint, has since said that the mystery around the number twenty three is self- fulfilling, proof that the mind can find meaning or truth in anything. 'When you start looking for something, you tend to find it' he said, 'it is all selective perception'. I'm sure he's right. 

This is the twenty third record in my record collection. A Certain Ratio in 1990, remixed by Bernard Sumner. 

Won't Stop Loving You

Monday's Long Song

Ten minutes of full on rave/ techno from The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu for today, 1991's maddest top ten single. The first half is all hammering beats, rain and rave bass, the heavy industry that made the north during the Industrial Revolution echoed in the drums and pistons firing the 12" onwards, and King Boy D (Bill Drummond) reciting the names of northern towns and cities, ending with the name of the motorway that runs east- west across the north of England, from Hull to Liverpool and back again...

'Bolton, Barnsley, Nelson, Colne, Burnley, Bradford, Buxton, Crewe, Warrington, Widnes, Wigan, Leeds, Northwich, Nantwich, Knutsford, Hull, Sale, Salford, Southport, Leigh, Kirkby, Kearsley, Keighley, Maghull, Harrogate, Huddersfield, Oldham, Lancs (Lancaster), Grimsby, Glossop, Hebden Bridge

'Brighouse, Bootle, Featherstone, Speke, Runcorn, Rotherham, Rochdale, Barrow, Morecambe, Macclesfield, Lytham St Annes, Clitheroe, Cleethorpes, the M62

Pendlebury, Prestwich, Preston, York, Skipton, Scunthorpe, Scarborough-on-Sea, Chester, Chorley, Cheadle Hulme, Ormskirk, Accrington, Stanley, Leigh, Ossett, Otley, Ilkley Moor, Sheffield, Manchester, Castleford, Skem, Doncaster, Dewsbury, Halifax, Bingley, Bramhall, are all in the North'

At seven minutes the song breaks down and Jerusalem appears through the gloom, Hubert Parry's rousing anthem a welcome coda- a socialist utopia reached through rave perhaps. 

It's Grim Up North (Part 1)

All Aboard

I woke up yesterday morning with the line from The KLF's Last Train To Trancentral running through my head, 'All aboard, all aboard, woah- oh'. In 1991 they performed it on Top Of The Pops, a peak KLF 'live' performance in many ways.

This remixed version from the Last Train To Trancentral Remix 12" is a beauty, the halfway point between the Chill Out album and The KLF's magnificent run of stadium house singles, six minutes of train sounds (horns sounding, level crossing bells ringing, engines and rolling stock rumbling over the tracks) and some of the samples that make up the proper version. Ambient stadium house. 

Last Train To Trancentral (Remix 1)

Come Down Dawn

The KLF have spluttered back into life recently, thirty years since deleting their back catolgue. A couple of weeks ago a compilation album called Solid State Logic 1 appeared on the internet, dropped onto streaming services without warning- well, almost without warning, apparently a fly poster appeared under a railway bridge in Kingsland Road, London on the last day of 2020, but the eight track Best Of took most people by surprise. Yesterday Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty launched the second chapter of their musical back pages into the internet- a version of their 1990 album Chill Out appeared on Youtube retitled Come Down Dawn. 

Chill Out, from its sheep in a field cover to it's mythical recreation of a drive from Texas to Louisiana, was a KLF concept album, an ambient classic designed to be listened to as one piece of music, Drummond and Cauty on a road trip through the Deep South. It is peppered with samples from some of rock histories most famous songs- Elvis singing In The Ghetto, Fleetwood Mac's Albatross and Aker Bilk's Stranger On The Shore. Come Down Dawn has removed these samples, presumably for legal reasons, and although I miss them the broad, cinematic, blissed out sweep of Come Down Dawn works perfectly well without them. The rumble of trains, the voices, the pedal steel guitar, the radio reports and bird sounds are all still there, the vision is intact. The tracks have all been renamed and the original road trip from Texas to Louisiana now sets out from Brooklyn and runs down the east coast before heading to Mobile, Houston and Loredo, finishing in Mexico City. The last ten minutes of Come Down Dawn depart from the original release too, lots of new/old elements thrown in with parts from The White Room movie and various other KLF releases. A new mix then, the original re- imagined and reworked, much more than just the removal of some difficult- to- clear samples and you can say it's just a new way to recycle their material and provide some cashflow (although the return artists get from streaming rates means they won't see much) but it sounds pretty fresh to me and just what's needed for a Friday in February 2021. 

Here is an uncredited remix from The Orb in 1989 which takes a maximal approach to ambient house.  

3am Eternal (Blue Danube Orbital)

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.


PUNK'S NOT DEAD from Penkiln Burn on Vimeo.

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