What a miracle the KLF were: an elaborate practical joke at the expense of the music industry, seemingly both wholly cynical and completely sincere, who for a short period at the start of the 1990s bestrode the singles charts like a novelty colossus. A reissue of their greatest hits album wouldn’t seem cause for celebration — doesn’t the world have quite enough singles collections? — but the nature of the KLF’s disappearance (they burned a million quid and deleted their entire back catalogue) makes this unexpected reappearance a bit of an event.
These are hit singles that fizz with silliness in a uniquely British way. No American artist would have had the irreverence to ask Tammy Wynette, the queen of country, to sing ‘They’re justified and they’re ancient/ And they drive an ice cream van,’ over a house beat (‘Justified & Ancient’).
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