I'm going early as I will be out tomorrow night and I've found what I wanted..

The KLF - Chill Out, 05 Feb.1990

Context:

My Dad managed to secure an early promo copy of Chill Out, late 1989. He was a fan of the KLF and a member of their pre-internet mailing list. My old man was pretty cool like that.

Looking back it’s really interesting looking at my Dad through the eyes of a 50 year old me. At the time it was kind of cool, having a cool dad, but it also had its own challenges. I mean, there's nothing like your Dad securing you tickets for Orb at The Poly as he knew Alex P, but then having to watch all your mates getting mullered and wanting hugs (because their Dad's weren't there).

I was 19, which means he would have been 41. Bless him. It now all makes absolute sense, but at the time I had to plan my gigs and nights out around the possibility that I could bump into my old man out with his mates.

Not so cool as a 19 year old, but then also really cool.

Anyway, I am rambling, but I am sure the KLF would approve of that.

My Dad played Chill Out to me one Sunday afternoon and it realy blew my mind. I had never heard anything like it. I knew of the KLF, but as a 19 year old I had a clearly defined idea of what was “proper.” Something you thankfully lose with age, but at 19 you're so binary in your tastes, it's either in or out. I mean I loved KLF's post Acid House bangers like 4AM Eternal and their more New Beat moments, but I wasn’t anywhere near post-modern enough to dig their more gonzo art-school hooligan antics, which I wasn’t really into. And anyway, they were my Dad’s band. And whilst Dad liked Joy Division, I liked New Order. Those are the rules of teenagers I guess..

Anyway, we played Chill Out a few times and he taped me a copy of the vinyl.

I really had to play it to the crew I was hanging around with, to see if they dug it as much as I did. However, finding the right moment to drop an LP like this was key. We were all into House mixes, as well as the Happy Mondays. Meaning if you pulled this one out at the wrong moment, it could have a negative effect and you'd never get a run at the boombox again!

Well, I eventually found my moment. Time when we had a spare "45 minutes" where we didn’t need to dance, nor talk shit, and that moment was, a drive over to the Hacienda from East Leeds one sunny spring afternoon.

“Bang this on for a minute, will yer,” and that was that, the fight for control of the cassette player was won as I was riding shotgun. And that’s where we heard it first, traversing the Pennies via the M62, up and over the moors and past the farm house that wouldn’t move for a £1m bid from developers (untrue, but everyone had this story woven into their patter). The moors with all its different browns and intermittent flashes of purple heather. The sun which was shining for a change was starting to set, as we went over the top. Past the roadside "red rose" sign confirming that we had entered Lancashire. And all those sheep of course, just like on the cover. A perfect setting and a perfect mission. Off to the Hacienda, powering through the desolate wilderness in a hatchback, on our the way to church..

My mates were totally blown away and kept asking for a “rewind” on the more chuggy "las train" parts.

This is ace! Where the hell did you get this from?

My Dad gave it me 😎

Love you Dad, shine on you cool bastard!

I’m 38 minutes in and sobbing like a 3 year old, first time I’ve proper cried in ages..

Music, eh?

Proper!

What the reviews say:

In a press release, the KLF announced Chill Out as the birth of a new sub-genre: ambient house. At the time, its name sounded like a paradox: House music is about rhythm, movement, bodies in motion; ambient is amorphous, atmospheric, fundamentally disembodied. In fact, they said, the fusion was a natural response to the physiological and chemical stresses of rave culture, a format grown “out of spending 12 hours at a rave, dancing nonstop all night, and then needing something to ease back into the reality of Sunday morning.”

As the first generation of ravers was still discovering the effects (and aftereffects) of watching the sun come up over muddy fields, the idea of music tailor-made to soothe fragile synapses was still a novel concept.
In typical KLF fashion, it was hard to know to what extent they were actually serious about any of this; half the press release was unabashedly tongue-in-cheek, a none-too-subtle sendup of new-age woo (“Ambient house makes love with the wind and talks to the stars”). And then there were those sheep on the album’s cover art—inspired by the cow on the cover of Pink Floyd’s Atom Heart Mother, according to Drummond. The sleeve, he said, captured the feeling of daybreak in a grassy field full of sleepy-eyed ruminants; there was something deeply English and deeply rural about the whole raving phenomenon. The sheep, the KLF explained, represented “spiritually highly-evolved creatures who are totally at one with their universe. If you doubt this, just gaze at the cover of Chill Out whilst listening to it and share the serenity.”

Far from the gonzo antics and heavy-handed satire of the KLF’s early work, Chill Out is subtle, hypnotic, and mysterious, with nary a shred of smugness or snark. The baaing sheep might once have been purely farcical, but here their purpose is more ambiguous—a subliminally pastoral chorus barely perceptible within the overall mix. From Chill Out’s very opening moments, the listener descends into an unfamiliar swirl of sensations—by turns lulling, lyrical, and deeply unsettling—and doesn’t come up for air until nearly 45 minutes later.

For you Dad x