The KLF's Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty plan Mumufication pyramid project

Celebrating their return to the creative fray, the event is the first time Drummond and Cauty have been seen together since a chaotic live performance (as K2) in 1997.

Day one of the festival centred around the launch of their new book, 2023. Day two included a discussion around why they had burned £1million in cash on the Hebridean island of Jura back in 1995. On the third day the duo announced Mumufication, their entry into the world of funeral services. Not mummification. Mumufication…

Drummond, from Dumfries and Galloway, and Cauty, from Cheshire, first met in early 1987, releasing their first single as the JAMs later the same year. In 1991, by now operating as the KLF, the pair were the biggest-selling dance music act in the world.

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Four years later they had left the music industry. Given the pair’s predilection for unexpected changes of direction, discord and, erm, fire, Drummond and Cauty’s decision to become undertakers makes perfect sense.

Mumufication is part of the twosome’s People’s Pyramid project, wherein customers buy a brick that, after their death, will contain a portion of their ashes. Post-mortem, a friend (or colluding family member), passes the brick and ashes to a crew who then fire the brick and add it to the other bricks that will, over time, form a pyramid that stands as a monument to those who have taken part.

And, while Drummond and Cauty’s skill set may be broad, they’ve sensibly partnered with real life funeral directors in order to navigate the tricky bits.

Jimmy Cauty, right, and Bill Drummond watch proceedings on the Toxteth Day of the Dead 

Step forward The Green Funeral Company (TFGC). Based in Totnes in Devon, TGFC specialise in ecological alternatives to traditional funerals, utilising chemical-free funerary processes and environmentally sound materials, as well as offering non-religious services.

How, I ask TGFC owner Rupert, did he first meet The JAMs?

“I met Jimmy when I curated his dystopian travelling model town, the Aftermath Dislocation Project (ADP) here in Totnes in 2016,” he says. “I’d had some dealings with Bill when he contributed an essay for Writing On Death, an anthology I was editing for The Natural Death Handbook.

“Six months after the ADP left town, Jimmy’s brother Simon, who had played a big part in the aesthetic look of the KLF and designed and built their extravagant sets, tragically took his own life, and Jimmy and his family asked us to do his funeral.

“Some of what we did at the funeral fused with ideas that both Jimmy and Bill had had bubbling away in their heads for years, specifically the obsessive idea they both had of building pyramids, and Jimmy’s long held desire to turn his own ashes into a brick. A few months after that, Jimmy texted: ‘me and Bill have had an idea…’.”

Mooted to be 23-feet tall and to last for at least 1000 years, it will take a while to gather enough bricks to complete the pyramid. Playing a key role in the project feels like a big commitment.

“It’s an enormous commitment, and one we take very seriously. Bill and Jimmy did ask us repeatedly whether we were sure. Between us all we have 11 children, so we figure that, as a last resort, some of them can take over when we’re called through The Black Door.”

The People’s Pyramid is intended to be built in the Liverpudlian district of Toxteth, a place that resonates strongly with Drummond. He was based there in the late 1970s when he released singles by local bands Echo & the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes on his Zoo Records label, for example. But there are complications.

IT seems constructing a pyramid made from human ashes isn’t as straightforward as people might think.

“When we started the project, we knew that finding a suitable site in Toxteth to build a 23-foot high pyramid might not be easy, even though there are a great deal of derelict properties in the area,” says Rupert.

“We’ve given ourselves five years to find somewhere – of which we have two remaining – before we look elsewhere”.

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So, as the pyramid-shaped project unfolds, one more burning question for Rupert: Do you think you’ll add your remains to the pyramid?

“That’s a tricky one. I’m still not sure, after 23 years of being an undertaker, whether I am being buried or cremated.

“I’ve said publicly that I want to be burnt on a funeral pyre so, if that happens, someone is going to have to rake through the ashes and get busy with a pestle and mortar.

“If that does happen, then definitely.”

Find out more about Mumufication here: www.mumufication.com