The White Room (KLF album)

The White Room was conceived as the soundtrack to a road movie, also called The White Room, about the KLF's search for the mystical White Room that would enable them to be released from their contract with Eternity. Parts of the movie were filmed in the Sierra Nevada region of Spain, using the money that the duo, under the alias The Timelords, had made with their 1988 number one hit "Doctorin' the Tardis".[1] The soundtrack album contained pop-house versions of some of the KLF's earlier "Pure Trance" singles, as well as new songs.

The film project was fraught with difficulties and setbacks, including dwindling funds. Drummond and Cauty had released "Kylie Said to Jason" (), a single from the original soundtrack, in the hopes that it could "rescue them from the jaws of bankruptcy"; it flopped commercially, however, failing to make even the UK top 100. As a consequence, The White Room film project was put on hold, and the KLF abandoned the musical direction of the soundtrack and single.[2] Neither the film nor the soundtrack album were formally released, although bootleg copies of both exist.

Meanwhile, the KLF's single "What Time Is Love?", which had originally been released in 1988 and largely ignored by the public, was generating acclaim within the underground clubs of continental Europe; according to KLF Communications, "The KLF were being feted by all the 'right' DJs".[2] This prompted Drummond and Cauty to pursue the acid house tone of their Pure Trance series. A further Pure Trance release, "Last Train to Trancentral", followed.

In October 1990, the KLF launched a series of singles with an upbeat pop-house sound they dubbed "Stadium House". Songs from The White Room soundtrack were re-recorded with rap and more vocals (by guests labelled "Additional Communicators"), a sample-heavy pop-rock production, and crowd noise samples. The "Stadium House" versions of "What Time Is Love?" and "3 a.m. Eternal" were immediate hits, with "3 a.m. Eternal" becoming the KLF's second, and the only one under the name, number-one release. These "Stadium House" tracks made up a large part of The White Room when it was eventually released in March 1991, substantially reworked from the original version. Aside from the singles, "Make It Rain", "Build a Fire", "Church of the KLF" and "The White Room" appeared in significantly more minimal, ambient and dub-oriented versions on the final album. "Go To Sleep" was reworked to become "Last Train To Trancentral".

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[3]
Entertainment Weekly	A−[4]
Los Angeles Times	[5]
Q	[6]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[7]
Select	4/5[8]
Slant Magazine	[9]
The Village Voice	A−[10]

Iestyn George of Q called The White Room "strikingly imaginative" and "a more subtle form of subterfuge" than previous works.[6] In a retrospective review of the album, John Bush of AllMusic said that The White Room "represents the commercial and artistic peak of late-'80s acid-house"[3] A retrospective review by Splendid magazine thought some of the tracks to be filler and the album "silly" in places, but were extremely impressed by the "Stadium House" songs. "As providers of perverse, throwaway, three-minute pop-song manna," they concluded, "the KLF were punk rock, the Renaissance, Andy Warhol and Jesus Christ all rolled into one."[11]

In 1993, NME staff and contributors voted the album the 81st best of all time,[12] and in 2000, Q magazine listed it as the 89th best British album of all time.[13] Scotland on Sunday listed The White Room in their "Essential 100",[14] and readers of Scotland's Is this music? magazine voted the album the 44th best "Scottish" LP of all time.[15] The White Room is included in the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.[16]

• Jimmy Cauty – production, performance and programming
• Bill Drummond – production, performance, vocals and programming