The KLF‘s track What Time Is Love (the Pure Trance 1 version) was originally released in 1988 and is an original acid house track. Their breakthru however came with a reworked version What Time Is Love (Live at Trancentral) in 1990. They described this track as “stadium house”. This version does however contain a few samples.

The “I wanna see you sweat” sample comes from the track To the Bone by Wanda Dee released just 1 year earlier in 1989. Interestingly another sample from that track was used on the KLF’s Last Train to Transcentral.

The KLF also used a sample of the MC5’s Kick out the Jams from 1969. This had a double meaning since The KLF had previously worked under the name The Justified Ancients of MuMu, which in turns was abreviated to The JAMs. There’s also a sample by Kraftwerk’s Home Computer (1981) hidden in the middle.

After the  second release in 1990, the KLF also released a third version of the song entitled America: What Time Is Love? in 1991. This completely reworked version features a sample of Ace of Spades (1980) by Motörhead.

In the wake of the three versions of the song followed a few interesting songs. The Ragga Twins sampled it in Wipe the Needle already in 1991. Scooter (sadly) sampled it not once, but twice in a song, like he pretty much rips off any dance track that was ever famous. In 1993 The God Machine made a industrial-metal cover.The most bizarre cover of the song is most certainly The Williams Fairey Brass Band cover of it in 1997. The KLF would later feature this on their Fuck the Millennium-single. Max Tundra has done a cover in 2006. Last but not least, The Kaiser Chiefs did a cover in 2006 for BBC Radio 1 and quite an excellent one at that.

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