Review of Who Killed The KLF?

A film almost as weird as the KLF itself, which seems to have been as much prank as music band. I must admit that I rather liked "Last Train to Transcentral", and I really loved "Justified and Ancient", and now I'm not sure if that makes me a dupe of the prank or a knowing participant in the satire - I don't know whether it matters either. I quite enjoyed The Illuminatus trilogy, about which they made quite a big deal...though in the world in which we now live it doesn't seem quite as funny as it did.

This stuff was all coming out in the early 1990s, when I was the dad of very young children and not in any way a participant in rave culture, but I did like the KLF. The film is interesting and shows the extent to which they were always as much pranksters (and perhaps even conmen) as much as artists. Their early hits were based on ripping off other stuff and a sharp understanding of howto game the music business, which - delightfully - they then shared with others.

I am pleased to see that though they were absolutely embedded in the music business, they don't seem to have been posh boys - their rejection of the business was not based on noblesse and largesse.

The film spends quite a lot of time talking about the famous money-burning stunt. I still have very mixed feelings about that, but I'm also aware that it shows a better and more nuanced critique of what mone means in a capitalist system than the daft twats who claim that "cash is freedom".