The KLF - White Room

The White Room is the fourth and final studio album by British electronic music group The KLF, released on 3 March 1991. The album features versions of the band's hit singles, including What Time Is Love?, 3 a.m. Eternal, 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 1989–1990 sessions.

Writing for Select, Andrew Harrison praised The White Room as an enthralling album which plays a disconcerting game with the listener's expectations of the commercial end of house. In Q, Iestyn George called the album strikingly imaginative and a more subtle form of subterfuge than previous works. Anthony Farthing of Sounds viewed it as a neat summation of Drummond and Cauty's colourful history – it embraces their previous JAMs-related guises while still updating the Kopyright Liberation Front's corporate identity. Entertainment Weekly's Marisa Fox wrote that the album's diverse music is too rich to be labeled, while The Village Voice's Robert Christgau commented that the KLF like everything I like about house and are canny enough to can the boring parts. NME journalist James Brown, however, found the album insignificant and unadventurous, criticising its songs' lack of direction and hard substance.

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. Franklin Soults stated in the 2004 Rolling Stone Album Guide that on The White Room, the KLF became what they'd mocked with this enduring embrace of Euro-trash club culture. They knew their exit cue. 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.

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

Tracks:
01 Kylie Said to Jason (Edit) 4:05
02 3 a.m. Eternal (Pure Trance Original) (Edit) 4:24
03 Go to Sleep 3:44
04 Make It Rain 3:43
05 Church of the KLF 3:58
06 No More Tears 3:26
07 Build a Fire 5:02
08 The Lovers' Side 4:24
09 The White Room 4:31
10 Born Free 3:02
11 What Time Is Love? (LP Mix) 4:37
12 Make It Rain 4:06
13 3 a.m. Eternal (Live at the S.S.L.) 3:36
14 Church of the KLF 1:53
15 Last Train to Trancentral (LP Mix) 5:33
16 Build a Fire 4:39
17 The White Room 5:14
18 No More Tears 9:24
19 Justified and Ancient 4:43