Chill Out

by

The KLF

Edit

The general premise (I assumed) of the album was the concept of a night traveler in Texas and Louisiana who picks up various country, Mexican, blues and Bible-belt radio stations, over which the KLF added the typical nocturnal sounds you hear in the countryside (albeit with a few effects, some thunder and atmospheric synths).

I originally bought this album in the fall of 1990 -- I'm not sure why Amazon says the release date is 1993 (maybe I had a UK import?). I was very disappointed in the album at first by its "lack of beats". I was looking for the big KLF hit at the time "What Time is Love?" and nothing on this CD sounded like that track. Yet despite the absence of danceable rhythms, this album over the years is one of very few that I think captures the ideology and essence of the early 1990s electronic music/rave years, not necessarily as an archive of club hits but more as musical analogy.

The concept of sampling random sounds to make beautiful music is familiar to most "techno" fans. But the radio and other samples the KLF use to depict the culturally chaotic American landscape are just a background to the "big picture". Samples include the broadcast of the "Nassau County (Long Island, NY.) police investigating a fatal accident following a drag race on Merrick Rd. in Wantagh" and God-fearing, but money-scheming Southern preachers armed with phone numbers and scripture. In another sample, a creepily distorted generic radio announcer boasts over FM static, "Rock radio, rock radio, into the '90s and beyond". But above this hodgepodge of everyday Americana, lies a message of hope for life beyond the radio.

This message is mostly revealed in the vocal sample of a self-promoting, self-help salesman from a few decades before our time telling people to "get ready" for his big tour "all the way down the East Coast from Boston to Atlanta, Georgia" He promises to come back "fat as a rat" with so much money "you're gonna be scared, because I (he) got it."

His exhortations from years back paralleled the wide-eyed, hippie-like positivity that existed during those brief early years of the rave scene. Although his self-boasting and desire for wealth didn't mesh with our ideals, the conviction for his trade did. In one vocal sample, the salesman tells his listeners with urgency to pick up their phones and "call 50 of your friends, and for them to call their friends" and spread word about his tour down the East Coast.

This same word-of-mouth, hype/promotion fueled the spread of the rave scene, and the sample of his emotionally charged voice from decades past tingles today's listener with goosebumps, as he captures the same urgent energy of ravers years later. Like news of his tour, the rave scene spread via the word of mouth of excited friends who insisted that their friends attend the next event.

Phew! This is one long, non-objective review, but this CD is one of my ESSENTIAL discs that I will cherish for a lifetime. For those of you who made it through my "thesis" thanks for reading.