8.

The KLF – Chill Out

When I was a teenager, my physics teacher gave me both The KLF and the Trance Europe Express compilation. He’s responsible for everything, really. I didn’t know he liked electronic music, and at the time I didn’t think I did. In the Midlands at the time it was all Tall Paul and Sasha and stuff, and a different social group of people from me at school were into it – I assumed it wasn’t for me. But I was making music on my computer, and the music teacher played it to my physics teacher, and then he started giving me everything: early Detroit, early jungle, and then these two tapes, which really made an impression.

The KLF I sat on for ages, and then when I was an actual student I spent ages listening to it, lying around. So it’s one of those records which is in the list because it means something to me. Around that time, when I was a student, it was that and Aphex and weird experiential rather than delivery-focused music, and then Gemma was introducing me to post-rock at the same time, and it all just seemed to go together – the sense of place in a Mogwai record is quite similar to the sense of place in this KLF tape for example. That’s what I really loved about it, actually. Music and traveling is always a magical experience, but that tape gives you the feeling of traveling even when you’re listening to it at home. It’s not a complicated thought, is it? [laughs] It’s magic that tape, it’s so full of atmosphere, and things happen that trigger a whole change of feeling and emotion and sense of place. It’s the best advert for America, just because of the radio snippets through it. It’s a really utopian, enticing record.