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The KLF were one of the seminal bands of the British acid house movement during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Beginning in 1987, Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty released hip hop-inspired and sample-heavy records as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, and on one occasion as The Timelords. As The KLF, Drummond and Cauty pioneered the genres "stadium house" and "ambient house. The KLF released a series of international top-ten hits on their own KLF Communications record label, and became the biggest-selling singles act in the world for 1991. The duo also published a cynical book, The Manual, and worked on a road movie called The White Room.
From the outset, they adopted the philosophy espoused by esoteric novel series The Illuminatus! Trilogy, gaining notoriety for various anarchic situationist manifestations, including the defacement of billboard adverts, the posting of prominent cryptic advertisements in NME magazine and the mainstream press, and highly distinctive and unusual performances on Top of the Pops. Their most notorious performance was a collaboration with Extreme Noise Terror at the February 1992 BRIT Awards, where they fired machine gun blanks into the audience and dumped a dead sheep at the aftershow party. This performance announced The KLF's departure from the music business, and in May 1992 the duo deleted their entire back catalogue.
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