Review Summary: A perfect half-hour delight to present the KLF's hits to Generation Z and beyond.
February 12, 1992 at the Hammersmith Odeon: the BRIT Award ceremony took place.
Freddie Mercury posthumously received his award for Outstanding Contribution to Music,
Seal had won three awards for British Album, British Video and British Male Solo Artist, and acts like
Simply Red and
Lisa Stansfield gave performances at the ceremony.
But THE moment that might be stuck the most in people's heads was neither of these. It was the opening performance, done by dance/ambient house act
The KLF (who had won, along with Simply Red, the Best British Group award) and grindcore metal band Extreme Noise Terror, in which they performed a metal version of the KLF's "3 A.M. Eternal", ending with KLF member Bill Drummond firing blanks from a vintage machine gun over the audience, along with their publicist saying: "Ladies and gentlemen, The KLF have now left the music business". The tip of the iceberg wasn't reached until they left a dead sheep at the aftershow party, broke up, took their entire catalog off the market, and buried their award near Stonehenge. The KLF never re-released anything of their work and sadly prevented a subsequent generation of electronic music fans from finding and listening to their music (not just via non-offically released videos) - until January 1, 2021, nearly 29 years after their last performance.
The day before, posters and graffiti were found under a railway bridge in East London. The posters consisted of the KLF logo and the date 1-1-2021. On this date, the album "Solid State Logik 1" was released, as the first album of a series titled "Samplecity Thru Trancentral" which should consist of five more albums. It is questionable whether the successors will achieve the quality of the series' debut, as the half-hour and streaming-only "Solid State Logik 1" consists of some of their biggest and best hits.
Things already start on a high note with the first track, "Doctorin' the Tardis" (released under the name "The Timelords"), a UK number one in 1988 which led to their "Manual". The "Pump Up the Volume"-type track is a mash-up of the Doctor Who theme song with 1970s glam rock songs and "Loadsamoney" - and while lyrically stupid (in a good way and possibly on purpose), it has a very catchy chorus. I'll guarantee it'll be stuck in your head for quite a while.
Next on the list is the so-called "Stadium House Trilogy": the songs "What Time is Love?", "3 A.M. Eternal" and "Last Train to Trancentral" - all of them are noted for crowd noise in the background. Of those three, "Last Train to Trancentral" is my favorite, but all three are actually almost equally strong and for a good reason big hits in the early 1990s. I would highly recommend these tracks to younger DJs to play at parties.
The second half starts with "It's Grim Up North" (released under the name "The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu"), which comes close to "Doctorin' the Tardis" regarding the stupidity of the lyrics - it is basically a listing of Northern English towns and cities over upbeat industrial techno music. I still like this one nevertheless. A rework of "What Time is Love?" titled "America: What Time is Love?" and the new-jack-swing-styled "Justified & Ancient" (for which they could win none other than
Tammy Wynette as a feature) pave the way to the final track, a never before released studio version of the aforementioned metal cover of "3 A.M. Eternal" together with Extreme Noise Terror. For myself, it's actually the weakest track (on a very high level) on the album, but metal fans will find their fun on this one - it is scary enough to scare orchestral conductors out of the room, like it happened at the 1992 BRITs, when Sir Georg Solti left the hall during the performance.
Overall, "Solid State Logik 1" is a short, but great compilation album proving what has been missing on the streaming services for several years. Electronic music fans, both young and old, must find delight in this eight-track album. Let's see what the following albums will deliver.
