The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band That Burned a Million Pounds

John Higgs

Man this is a weird one.

Ostensibly this is a book about a dance band that was also a sort of chaos art project that involved outlandish stunt after outlandish stunt culminating the burning of a million British pounds on a desolate island. An action that was widely panned and that the band itself could never successfully explain.

Its also a book about weird undercurrents of magic and conspiracy theories that have simmered in certain corners of British pop culture for decades, from the comics of Alan Moore to the Dr. Who series. But that’s not all, it’s also a  book about the surprisingly far reaching effect of a discordianism – a religion of sorts made up as a kind of joke by a bunch of American weirdos and made famous in the science fiction novels of Robert Anton Wilson.

It’s a wild ride, going from the JFK assassination to the business of dance music production, from chaos magic to children’s television shows and I loved it. As someone who has followed this weird world for a long time, I thought I knew the story of the KLF, but nope, I didn’t know the half of it. Unlike most writers in this area, Higgs is a real journalist who did the real footwork necessary to tell this story and boy is it compelling.

If the weird is your thing, then this book is definitely for you.

Recommended.