The KLF

In 1987, a pair of disillusioned UK post-punk scenesters seized upon cheap samplers, the rude energy of American hip-hop and conspiracy-minded science fiction to create one of the era's strangest and most innovative acts. Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty's early singles as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu expanded sampling's creative possibilities in the era just before copyright lawyers ruined everything. An unapologetically cynical, deliberately moronic feint at the charts, The Timelords' "Doctorin' the Tardis," did in fact reach the top of the pops; the duo then sardonically explained how in The Manual (How To Have A Number One The Easy Way). After helping invent ambient dance music with 1990's ethereal Chill Out (probably their best extended work), the newly-renamed KLF brought club music into the charts with classic "stadium house" singles like "3 a.m. Eternal" and "Justified and Ancient." The duo's controversial decision to abandon music for guerilla-style performance art (including one 1994 action in which the pair set fire to one million pounds of their own money) cemented their raving-lunatics reputation at the expense of their music. Which is a shame, because most of it holds up better than that of their acid house contemporaries.