The KLF are back… and not a moment too soon…
What is it about two-decade hiatuses in the music industry? In the past few years, we’ve seen the return of drone rockers My Bloody Valentine, with their first new album since 1991, and The Stone Roses, who reformed 17 years after their disastrous blowout at the Reading Festival…
Now it’s the turn of techno pranksters The KLF, who returned at 00.23am this morning (23 August), exactly 23 years after their much-heralded publicity stunt – the burning of £1 million on the island of Jura, Scotland, in 1994. Rather than release a new album, however, the self-styled Justified Ancients of Mu Mu have this time published a book: 2023: A Trilogy [buy it on Amazon here]
As this article from today’s The Guardian explains, the book envisages a world in which the world is ruled by a Big Five multinational tech corporations, GoogleByte, Wikitube, Amazaba, FaceLife and AppleTree, reality TV impresario Simon Cowell has been murdered, and general degradation persists all round.
An extract from the book reads thus:
“There are some who have decreed order is the natural order of not only the human condition but of everything that has ever existed and is ever likely to exist.
And there are those who have proclaimed chaos is the natural order not only of the human condition but of everything that has ever existed and is ever likely to exist.
And there are those who have made it their lives’ work to exploit our natural hunger for order.
And there are those who have made it their lives’ work to exploit our natural hunger for chaos.
It is a free market for all of you living in the free world.”
Stirring stuff. But what about the burning of the million quid (which is now worth £1.87 million, adjusted for inflation)? What’s the deal with the year 2023? And more importantly, what happened to the music?
Something tells me we haven’t heard the last of Messrs. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty. In the meantime, check out this classic video of What Time Is Love, from 1991…
[Main image taken from The KLF’s Facebook page]
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