The KLF "Chill Out" JAMSCD5

http://www.protectlinks.com/98658 (original UK JAMSCD5 "Chill Out" ripped at 320kps. Note, this CD is one track 44 minutes 43 seconds long. If you want the 14-track version, please ask and I'll upload it)

p/w inverarity

The tracklisting, taken from the 14-track US CD is this:

1:43 Brownsville Turnaround On The Tex-Mex Border
1:29 Pulling Out Of Ricardo And The Dusk Is Falling Fast
3:01 Six Hours To Louisiana, Black Coffee Going Cold
2:37 Dream Time In Lake Jackson
7:41 Madrugada Eterna
1:09 Justified And Ancient Seems A Long Time Ago
2:40 Elvis On The Radio, Steel Guitar In My Soul
9:50 3 a.m. Somewhere Out Of Beaumont
5:57 Wichita Lineman Was A Song I Once Heard
0:56 Trancentral Lost In My Mind
3:26 The Lights Of Baton Rouge Pass By
1:51 A Melody From A Past Life Keeps Pulling Me Back
1:27 Rock Radio Into The Nineties And Beyond
0:47 Alone Again With The Dawn Coming Up

Originally announced on the inner label of KLF5R as "Live at Trancentral" (a phrase which appeared - in the first time in the KLF's history - on the back sleeve of the album), "Chill Out" was released initially in the UK in February 1990. By that time, the phrase "ambient house" was entering the language of hipsters, as the Orb's "A Huge Ever-Growing Brain" single became semi-legendary as a nineteen-minute keyboard spectacular with a Minnie Ripperton sample and a silly title. Cauty later claimed that the name "ambient house" was a joke, a pretend genre cooked up by the rapidly-coalescing Trancentral crew (the Cautys, Youth, Alex Paterson, occasionally Bill travelling in from Aylesbury, and a few others) which the music press grabbed hold of, and actually made real.

Many hours of experimental jams, all of them recorded on keyboards at Trancentral, had been a large part of Jimmy's musical output for the second half of 1989, and some of them were then taken down on DAT tapes to the Land of Oz, a room in Paul Oakenfold's Heaven nightclub which had seen the first live KLF performance, and where Cauty and Patterson would DJ playing slow, ambient music such as Eno or the soundtrack to "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence". These home-produced jams proved popular, and one eventually turned up as "Lovin' You" (aka "A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain That Controls from the Centre of the Ultraworld"), which appeared first as a late 1989 Peel Session, and then as promo 12" on Patterson's Wau Mr Modo label. This studio version was, famously, recorded at Trancentral in twenty minutes on a Sunday morning, with Cressida's washing machine cycle draining power from some of the keyboards in the kitchen, causing the occasional click sound on the original version. Surprisingly, this 19-minute Orb single even made the charts: number 78. The public's appetite for ambient music was growing.

The first "ambient house" album, however, was not released by the Orb (whose debut album and split will be dealt with in an up-coming Orb post), but actually by the KLF. Drummond's attitude about chill out music was similar to Cauty's, even though he did not DJ. In an interview a year later, he explained that after hearing Black Box's "Ride on Time" Drummond's pop sensibility kicked in, and realised that "up" dance music couldn't really get any higher than that. There was nowhere else to go other than to strip everything down to an almost beatless soundscape.

And so: "Chill Out" (JAMSCD/LP5). Recorded entirely live (in 45 minutes) using DATs and tapes mixed together, the album was actually aborted several times, with the KLF (possibly with the help of Alex Patterson, although this has never been confirmed) starting the whole album again from the beginning. Taking the structure of a road trip down the US Eastern Seaboard, visiting places neither Drummond or Cauty had even been to, but which sounded romantic on a map, the album was a sublime, new-sounding, and unique jam of train samples, crickets singing, water flowing, sheep herders and roughly two or three proper songs ("Madrugada Eterna", almost exactly the same as the version of KLF010CD, and the renamed "Last Train to Trancentral" reborn as "Witchita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard", along with various snippets of "3 AM Eternal"). Housed in that iconic sheep sleeve (an image the KLF claimed was picked from a bank of open-domain photographic images), "Chill Out" is arguably the duo's most consistent and interesting music offering. For a moment if you forget about the pranks, the jokes, and the shocking media incidents, if the KLF are to be judged purely on their music - and I hope that, more than anything, is what this blog is about - then "Chill Out" towers above the rest of their discography of novelty songs and mega-selling rave as something deeper, more muso, and more loved.

The cult of the album (many times confusingly referred to as the KLF's "debut") began to grow during 1990, as snippets reappeared on remixes and the soundtrack to their long-play mail-order-only video film "Waiting". A European issue (with a slightly altered sleeve and a barcode - the original UK CD issue does not have one, hence the sticker on the box) came out on Indisc as JAMSCD89005, followed by a Canadian WaxTrax issue and finally a US TVT release in 1991 (originally housed in a 12" "long box"). This final edition has never been deleted, and gives fans a cheap way of getting hold of the album, when the original UK CD (which features one long track rather than the US 14-tracker) goes for £30-40 now on Ebay.

"Chill Out" also reappeared as a bootleg housed alongside Jimmy Cauty's subsquent solo ambient album "Space" on both cassette and CD in 1994. The cassette is not terribly interesting, but the CD cleverly morphs together "Chill Out"'s sheep and "Space"'s astronaut covers and is well worth buying (cheaply) for its clever aping of the KLF style (although note that for the 70 minute time restrictions, the last few minutes of "Chill Out" are missing. All of "Space" is on there, though).

Owing to "Chill Out"'s continued availability on CD, the last bootleg issued was actually on vinyl, part of the "campaign" of bootleg LPs and 12"s which appeared in 2000 (JAMSLP1, JAMSDLP3, KLF8R, JAMSLP5 and SPACELP1). This bootleg is actually very easy to detect, as its cover has a distinctly "scanned" quality - the blue in the sky is almost purple, and features red mottling such as you get on colour photographs on newsprint. Also, the sleeve was glued together back-to-front and the opening for the record is actually (from the top) on the left rather than the right. Here is a cover image of the back of the 2001 bootleg LP, showing the deep blue, almost purple, colouring of the sky and - bizarrely - more clouds than the original image. In fact, the sky is arguably more similar in colour to the one on the cover of "Who Killed the JAMs"/"History of the JAMs" than the official "Chill Out":

Owing to its popularity among fans (and lets be honest, stoners), several fan remixes, homages and even sequels to "Chill Out" have been upped to the web over the years. Most of these are pretty dull, simply taking the basic elements of the album and mixing them up slightly. One of the best, however, has been online for many years and can be found to download here:

http://www.thismeanswar.net/water/k/

When I first discovered it, it took a full afternoon to download! Now, you can get it in a few minutes (if you have broadband). Produced by long-time KLF fan ODC1 in 1999, following a period of unemployment, it is by far the most interesting of KLF fan mixes, in my opinion.

The other interesting "Chill Out"-related release is a bootleg recording, which appeared originally in 2001, called "Made at 3AM Coming Down Off E". Apparently one of many pre-JAMSCD5 Cauty/Patterson/Drummond(?) jams recorded at Trancentral, it was made available via this website: http://positivevoid.co.uk/, home to much interesting and varied KLF product. I'm not sure if PVC's website is still going, but it's certainly worth a look.

Here is "Made at 3 AM Coming Down Off E" ripped at 128kps from CD:

http://www.protectlinks.com/98746 (p/w inverarity)

Finally, and perhaps inevitably, we return to sheep. Why sheep? After "Chill Out"'s release, the KLF went through a bit of an obsession with them. Fluffy toy ones appeared in photographs in their recording studio, positioned above the speakers; and they themselves were photographed with sheep (with KLF t-shirts draped across their wool) in a cafe. Sheep appeared in "Waiting", were also mentioned in the "It's Grim Up North" press release, and Jimmy's amusing cartoons that decorated KLF information sheets and order booklets began to feature sheep (again, with KLF written on their flanks):

Later on, the inner sleeve of "The White Room" (JAMSCD0006/JAMSLP6) featured an image of Bill and Jimmy dressed in their "It's Grim Up North" rainwear, holding two of the animals with the phrase "Why Sheep?" underneath. Then the KLF played rough footage of "The White Room" to a group of German film investors while sheep wandered through the audience. And finally, and most controversially, the KLF marked their award-winning night at the 1992 Brits by dumping a dead sheep on the steps of the hotel where the ceremony was being held. Why sheep indeed?

FOOTNOTE: in 1997, German label Sabotage released a CD called "Chill Out", the proceeds of which would go to wolf adoption charities. The cover was very clever, taking away all the sheep from the original JAMSCD5 sleeve and replacing it with wolves. It was certainly eye-catching and amusing, as you can see:

(Another parody of the KLF appeared in 2003, when Japanese group Earthborn released a 12" called "Why Sheep", with a sleeve that parodied "Shag Times". Since both this and "Chill Out" contain no - or at least very, very little - KLF music, I have decided not to up them).