Chill Out
| Chill Out | ||||
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| Studio album by The KLF | ||||
| Released | 05 February 1990 | |||
| Studio | Trancentral | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 44:19 | |||
| Label | KLF Communications | |||
| Producer | The KLF | |||
| The KLF chronology | ||||
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| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |  |
| Encyclopedia of Popular Music | |
| NME | 8/10 |
| Q (1990) |  |
| Q (1994) | |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
| Spin Alternative Record Guide | 9/10 |
| Sputnikmusic | 4.5/5 |
Chill Out is the third studio album by The KLF, released in February 1990 and one of the earliest ambient house concept albums. The music describes a mythical night-time journey to the U.S. Gulf Coast states beginning in Texas and ending in Louisiana.
"Chill Out" was a conceived as continuous piece of music, with original KLF music interwoven with sampled from songs by Elvis Presley, Fleetwood Mac, Acker Bilk and field recordings of Tuvan throat singers. Its best known track is "Wichita Lineman Was a Song I Once Heard".
According to KLF member Bill Drummond, the album and album sleeve has "the vibe of the rave scene over here [UK]. When we're having the big Orbital raves out in the country, and you're dancing all night and then the sun would come up in the morning, and then you'd be surrounded by this English rural countryside... we wanted something that kind of reflected that, that feeling the day after the rave, that's what we wanted the music for".
Chill Out is a single continuous musical piece having many distinctive sections, each of which either segues into or introduces the next. The album as a whole is a progression, with percussion gradually introduced during the second half. The KLF have stated in interviews that the album was recorded in a 44-minute "live" take in their studio, Trancentral, located in the basement of The KLF member Jimmy Cauty's squat in , South London. These took place at both Trancentral and the monthly 'Land of Oz' at London's Heaven nightclub. Said Cauty, "There's no edits on it. Quite a few times we'd get near the end and make a mistake and so we'd have to go all the way back to the beginning and set it all up again". According to Cauty's co-founder of The KLF, Bill Drummond, the album took two days to put together.Record Collector compared The KLF's production method to that of established electronic musicians: "While electronic dinosaurs like Jean Michel Jarre and Klaus Schulze were walling themselves in with banks and banks of synthesizers, computers and electronic gadgetry the KLF were doing the opposite—making a crafted work like Chill Out with the bare necessities of musical survival."
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