Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Selected tracks by The KLF

A little while ago I posited that Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond might rightly be considered as true pioneers of electronic trance. For the most part, The KLF owned all the rights to their own music, publishing it through their label KLF Communications. According to Discogs, in May 1992, they officially ended their music careers to pursue new artistic endeavours; they also deleted their entire catalogue of releases. I've checked Beatport and Juno and there was no KLF to purchase, so it seems that the two remain committed to art over profit.

I thought I would post a few select tracks only - there are extensive tribute site here and here and both have plenty of downloads available if you want to delve further...

First of all, "What Time Is Love?" in its two best forms - "Original Pure Trance" (1988) and "Live At Trancentral" (1990). I've said it before, but the Pure Trance mix is just so way ahead of its time that I can only think of one other track to compare it with, Humanoid's "Stakker" - both from England, both released in '88, both completely rewriting the dance floor template, both glorious mind fuck inducers.
The original mix of "What Time Is Love?" is very bare, has a slow tempo and a haunting sci-fi bassline fusing its melody and subtle kick drum. A Dr Who-like 'ooooooohhh' runs throughout to massive effect.
In 1990, the boys updated their tune (with a bit of help from others such as New York's Lenny Dee), totally transforming it into a high energy rave monster that pioneered the transfer of stadium rock excess to dance music. Everyone from The Prodigy to Underworld and 2 Unlimited took notice.

Discogs
What Time Is Love?
(Pure Trance Version)

CD Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire


What Time Is Love?
(Live At Trancentral)

Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire








"3am Eternal (Pure Trance Version)" (1989) is taken from the excellent Warehouse Raves 4 compilation - it's also got the Pure Trance Original of "What Time Is Love?" and a heap of other hard to find goodies (I'll probably post that too at some point). It's quite blissful, with a laid back vocal and a hypnotic groove. A few years later, it too got a stadium update leading to commercial chart success - The KLF had embraced cheese once more.

3am Eternal 
(Pure Trance Version)

CD Rip _ 320kbps MP3 ...mediafire









Cauty and Drummond didn't leave the underground altogether though, at the end of 1990 they reverted to a previous moniker, The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu, and put out the apocalyptic techno of "It's Grim Up North" in a limited release of 350 single-sided 12 inches on grey vinyl. No label text, no obvious artist identification - just a plain grey inner label.


In Melbourne, only one person had it - Mr Terry "H2O" Ho, and he DJed at the massively influential Maze underground night at The Commerce Club.

People waited all night to hear The Grey Record and embrace it's locomotive techno as it stormed out of the speakers and through the smoke machine across the dancefloor and into our shattered minds. It too got remixed and re-released (with new vocal and an awful guitar break), but the original was by far the best.



Discogs
A1 It's Grim Up North
(Original Club Mix)

Vinyl Rip _ 320kbps 
MP3 ...mediafire

3 comments:

  1. This was the living shit -hearing this back in the day , nothing else sounded like it - dance music will never as good as this EVER.

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  2. For a long time I had an MP3 just known as WTIL- £150 version. A little research showed there is (was? 2005) a version of What Time Is Love from 88 on 12" vinyl (1 sided promo I think) that sells for a whole heap of limey disposables! Thing is I cant track it down now. The 3rd time I DJ'd using a laptop next to my record dex (05) another DJ and good pal accidentally knocked my portable drive to the floor and I learned a lesson about backing up files! The 2 candidates off hand are a 1988 Pure Acid mix (was there one?) and the later Monster Mix which is close but I dont think its the "£150" one... I heard the mix played at a warehouse party in 1989. Its not dissimilar to the pure tance version and takes a good few minutes to go er... mental. But when it does its unlike anything else pre89. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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