single // ***k The Millennium
'What Time Is Love?', '3AM Eternal', 'Last Train
To Trancentral' - all songs synonymous in my memory with my first
love affair with music generally and dance music specifically. The
late eighties, and the ensuing dance-tinged early nineties were
a great time for an electronically-minded boy to be getting into
music, and The KLF played a major role in piquing my curiosity.
Later, at university I managed to track down original 12" versions
of the re-released 'What Time Is Love?' and '3AM' and, in my first
and only attempt at DJing, managed to beat-mix the two tracks perfectly
using the campus radio station's decks and cross-fader.
On the back of the three classic singles above,
I bought The White Room, and was hugely disappointed; the
straightahead dance tracks were nowhere to be seen, and the whole
album hung together disjointedly. The anarchistic / artistic events
that followed, the dead sheep and thrash-metal with crutches and
rifles version of '3AM' at the Brit Awards, the Tami Wynette version
of 'Justified And Ancient', the whole Justified Ancients of Mu-Mu
faux-cult thing generally; all of this left me thinking The KLF
a little silly, and it altered my affections toward the triumverate
of singles above.
Nevertheless, by 1997, my addiction for buying all
things Mute and a renewed interest in the 'mythology' I suppose
you'd call of it of The KLF, I was really excited by the prospect
of this single. Adopting the moniker 2K, Jimmy Cauty
and Bill Drummond reunited specifically for one single on
Blast First, following the inclusion of 'What Time Is Love?'
on the Acid Brass album.
With the combining together of the music I loved
as a teenager and my favorite record label, I was pretty excited
about this single. I remember vividly the day I bought this. I also
bought the second volume of Nick Cave's King Ink lyrics collection,
and it was during a period where futures were being decided and
graduate placements were being applied for. There was a rising level
of noise around the coming new millenium and the unifying celebrations
that would be had that year, the Millennium Bug was being lauded
as the end of modern civilisation, and this single aimed to tap
into that excitement. And just like most of those supposedly exciting
things, none of which lived up to their hype, neither does the 2K
single.
The central 'point', if indeed there is one, of
'***k The Millennium' is the line 'Fuck the millennium / We want
it now', which is meaningless and also fundamentally impossible
to achieve. The duo also take the opportunity - chortle, chortle
- to open the track with a shouted '1997 - what the fuck's going
on?', referencing the album from a decade before with which the
'controversy' that often circled Cauty / Drummond (and which now
seems childish) began.
At almost 14 minutes, '***k The Millenium' is an
in-joke taken too far, combining pointless sloganeering and the
pompous spoken word passages that ruined the rocked-up version of
'America : What Time Is Love?'. The only redeeming feature of this
song is the usage of a section of acid-house burbling from the original,
rare as hen's teeth, 'What Time Is Love?'; but when placed alongside
shouted nonsense, horns and repeated expletives one has to ask :
what's the point? Far better to track down that original classic
than indulge this disappointing nail in the Koffin.
Alongside a single edit, and a radio-friendly swearing-free
version thereof, there's an alternative version of the Williams
Fairey Band's take on 'What Time Is Love?'. With so much rear-view
mirror action going on, one is left with the inescapable notion
that this was a parting shot from a duo who were looking back fondly
on their achievements from yesterday, themselves wondering where
the ideas went and what the point of this single actually was. (The
12" includes a Pan Sonic remix of the Acid Brass
track which is probably worth owning; I don't know whether I've
got it or not.)
12":
A. 2K - ***k The Millennium
B1. Acid Brass - What Time Is Love? (Version K)
B2. Acid Brass - What Time Is Love? (Version P - Royal Oak Mix by
Pan Sonic)
CD:
1. ***k The Millennium
2. Acid Brass - What Time Is Love? (Version K)
3. ***k The Millennium (Radio Edit)
4. ***k The Millennium (Censored Radio Edit)
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