Duo comprised of Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond. Cauty was born in Devon, England; Drummond was born in South Africa but grew up in the Dumfries & Galloway area of Scotland.
KLF 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.
The KLF are accredited with the first Trance track release What time is love? in 1988.
With The KLF's profits, Drummond and Cauty established the K Foundation and sought to subvert the art world, staging an alternative art award for the worst artist of the year and burning one million pounds sterling. Although Drummond and Cauty remained true to their word of May 1992—the KLF Communications catalogue remains deleted in the UK—they have released a small number of new tracks since then, as the K Foundation, The One World Orchestra and most recently, in 1997, as 2K.
The KLF catalogue remained absent from digital platforms until January 1, 2021, when an 8-track compilation of their 7" hit singles 1988-1991 - 16730136 was released on streaming platforms, marking the 1st installment of a series called Samplecity Thru Trancentral.
KLF also published a book, The Manual, and worked on a road movie called The White Room.