The KLF

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What to expect

The strange tale of the death, life and legacy of the hugely successful band.

They were the bestselling singles band in the world. They had awards, credibility, commercial success and creative freedom. Then they deleted their records, erased themselves from musical history and burnt their last million pounds in a boathouse on the Isle of Jura. And they couldn't say why.

This is not just the story of The KLF. It is a book about Carl Jung, Alan Moore, Robert Anton Wilson, Ken Campbell, Dada, Situationism, Discordianism, magic, chaos, punk, rave, the alchemical symbolism of Doctor Who and the special power of the number 23.

Wildly unauthorised and unlike any other music biography, THE KLF is a trawl through chaos on the trail of a beautiful, accidental mythology.

Read by John Higgs

(p) Orion Publishing Group 2018

Critics Review

  • The best non-fiction book I’ve ever read. It’s magical. Stunning

    NO SUCH THING AS A FISH

  • A pop biography for people who don’t read pop biographies. Higgs approaches the short career of the early 90s top 10 provocateurs like Adam Curtis brainstorming with Thomas Pynchon, exploring all manner of magical thinking and conspiracy theories. Touching on Dada, Doctor Who and Discordianism, it’s as playful and sui generis as the KLF themselves, which is saying something

    GUARDIAN

  • Might well be the best music book of the 2010s . . . eccentric, bizarre, confusing, hilarious and more than a little pretentious but utterly irresistible and totally brilliant

    THE QUIETUS

  • The book brilliantly captures the anti-establishment attitude of Drummond and Cauty, and makes you wish the pop charts were full of such madness these days

    THE BIG ISSUE

  • This wildly entertaining thesis speculates on how the KLF arrived at a crowning act of transgression even they did not understand, drawing together threads including practical magic, strange patterns of coincidence and punk

    MOJO

  • Succeeds by ignoring music for much of the story, in favour of the group’s philosophical and psycho-geographical underpinnings in Discordianism, situationism, art and magic. Sometimes, the music is just a means to an end – in their case, a million-quid bonfire that Higgs suggests may be “a magical act that forged the 21st century”. Well, maybe . . .

    INDEPENDENT

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