Rocktrospectiva: The Enthralling "The White Room" Turns 35

Released on 4 march 1991 "The White Room" was the  fourth and final studio album by British electronic music group the KLF, released on 4 March 1991. The album features versions of the band's hit singles, including "What Time Is Love?", "3 a.m. Eternal", "Justified and Ancient" and "Last Train to Trancentral". Originally scheduled for 1989 as the soundtrack to a film of the same name, the album's direction was changed after both the film and the original soundtrack LP were cancelled.

Most tracks on the original album version are present in the final 1991 release, though in significantly remixed form. The White Room was supposed to be followed by a darker, harder complementary album The Black Room, but that plan was abandoned when the KLF retired in 1992. On 23 April 2021, a re-edited version of the album was officially released on streaming platforms, in a series of digital reissues, as The White Room (Director's Cut), featuring new edits of original tracks from 1989 to 1990 sessions.

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 Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, under the alias The Timelords, had made with their 1988 number-one hit "Doctorin' the Tardis". 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. 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". 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, 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".

From the original record that was planned for release in 1989 as Tunes from the White Room,  in 1997, a bootleg CD taken from a low-quality cassette rip was released and included some bonus tracks. A higher-quality version, allegedly created by someone who mastered the original album DAT in a professional studio, was hosted on a popular KLF fan site, KLF.de in the early 2000s.

The album gained mixed critics, some praise the album as an enthralling album which played a disconcerting game with the listener's expectations of the commercial end of house era, a neat summation of Drummond and Cauty's colourful history, as the album had a diverse music too rich to be labeled, however, others found the album insignificant and unadventurous, with lack of direction and  substance, in the years to come, the album perception has changed considered as the artistic peak of late-'80s acid-house. 

 

The White Room 1991 Release Track List: 

 

1. What Time Is Love (LP Mix)

2. Make It Rain

3. 3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.)

4. Church Of The KLF

5. Last Train To Trancentral (LP Mix)

6. Build A Fire

7. The White Room

8. No More Tears

9. Justified And Ancient