"What Time Is Love?" is a song released, in different mixes, as a series of singles by the band The KLF. It featured prominently and repeatedly in their output from 1988 to 1992 and, under the moniker of 2K, in 1997. In its original form, the track was an instrumental acid house anthem; subsequent reworkings, with vocals and additional instrumentation, yielded the international hit singles "What Time Is Love? (Live at Trancentral)" (1990) and "America: What Time Is Love?" (1991), which respectively reached number 5 and number 4 in the UK Singles Chart and introduced The KLF to a mainstream international audience.

The KLF co-founders Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond began releasing music in March 1987, under the pseudonym The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (The JAMs), named after a cultish organisation from The Illuminatus! Trilogy novels. The JAMs' output was created from plagiarised samples of popular music grafted together to form new songs, with beatbox rhythms and Drummond's often political raps. Initially hip hop-oriented, The JAMs' sound soon inclined towards house music. Their second album, Who Killed The JAMs?, was followed by a newsletter which expressed regret that people believed The JAMs were leading "a crusade for sampling", and suggested "We might put out a couple of 12-inch records under the name The K.L.F., these will be rap free just pure dance music, so don't expect to see them reviewed in the music papers." The first incarnation of "What Time Is Love?" followed.

"What Time Is Love?" became one of The KLF's central tracks, dubbed their "three-note warhorse of a signature tune" by Bill Drummond, in reference to the three-note bassline which, together with a high-pitched refrain on two notes (B bending to F#) characterises the song. The bassline is very similar to the one used by Anne Clark the electronic musician in her 1984 song Our Darkness and to the guitar introduction to the song Heaven On Their Minds from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar

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