What is the “Pure Trance” series?

Yet another KLF project that didn’t quite get off the ground. It was envisaged as a 10×2000 series of limited edition 12″ singles, released weekly in September-December 1988.

We thought we’d like to make a record that would make sense when you’re out at one in the morning; a real minimalist thing – a reaction against all the sampled stuff we’d been doing. But then we had an even better idea – why not put out five records, one a week?Bill Drummond (Record Mirror, 29 Jul 1989)

The original schedule included the following releases:

KLF 004T/R: What Time Is Love? (17th/24th October 1988)
KLF 005T/R: 3 a.m. Eternal (31st October/7th November 1988)
KLF 006T/R: Love Trance (14th/21st November 1988)
KLF 007T/R: Turn Up The Strobe (28th October/5th December 1988)

It is not entirely clear which of the many scheduled but non-released singles was intended to be KLF 008, as there are two singles that were announced and/or for which sleeves and labels were printed:

KLF 008T/R: E-Train To Trancentral/The White Room (12th/possibly 19th December 1988)

or

KLF 008T/R: The Lover’s Side/Go To Sleep (12th/19th December 1988)

All the labels and sleeves were printed up as a batch lot to save money (and still survive – they can be seen in Pete Robinson’s Justified And Ancient History, and some record dealers try to sell them for 25 pounds a time! Mad!) even though some of the tracks were unfinished.

We wanted to do these trance-dance instrumental tracks. The idea was to make minimalistic instrumental music that makes no sense whatsoever except when you’re out of your brain and it’s very late at night. We came up with the titles for all five singles, got the sleeves printed for them, and only afterwards started coming up with the music.Bill Drummond (NME, 26 Aug 1989)

In the end a combination of location filming in Spain for the White Room motion picture taking precedence, and a complete lack of interest from the British public, lead to the series being cancelled, although the first 4 of the 12″ singles were eventually released (unknown whether they contained the same tracks as first realised) and most of the tracks re-appeared as radio edits on the unreleased White Room soundtrack LP. The discography holds full detail about all the (some only scheduled) releases.

However in January 1990, Last Train to Trancentral was released with the cat no. KLF 008R, first as a white label, then 2000 standard releases (of which 1000 were warped and not released). It is possible that this is the re-named remix of the original ‘E-Train To Trancentral’, but no-one knows. Another interesting note regarding KLF008R is that the label’s “Other Data” is “Go to Sleep”, not “Welcome to the Trance” as on all the other pure trance 12″s.

Many copies of KLF 008R have a sleeve similar to KLF005T (pink on black) but the pink is a more fleshy colour than on Pure Trance 2. All sleeve fronts also featured the name of the track, “THE KLF”, a small pyramid blaster in a circle and “PURE TRANCE” in the colour of the number.

It is not sure whether or not Love Trance and Turn Up The Strobe have been recorded (although there is a possible bootleg release that claims to be “Love Trance”; please see the bootleg section for more details), but some of Go To Sleep is on the White Room film soundtrack and it features on the bootleg demos. The chorus of Go To Sleep is also sampled on the 808Bass mix of LTTT, and parts of it also appear on the Moody Boys remix of “What Time Is Love?”.

According to Pete Robinson’’s “Justified And Ancient History”, there were plans to remix the above as an album called “Pure Trance”, and then further as “Live At Trancentral”, as well as having them on the White Room soundtrack. As is usual with most KLF plans, it didn’t happen.

Filed under Other Creative Exploits
Tags: 3 a.m. eternal, go to sleep, klf, love-trance, pure-trance, turn up the strobe, what-time-is-love
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