The White Room

We Say...

Review by Michaelangelo Matos

Of all the aspects of the brief, strange career of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, a.k.a. the KLF, the music is usually the least discussed. For good reason, too: between the ridiculous pseudo-mythology, the publicity stunts (flying journalists to a rave where the KLF played "3 a.m. Eternal" at, you guessed it, 3 a.m.), the lawsuits, the releases withdrawn due to uncleared samples, the book (The Manual, a guide to making a No. 1 record), the joke 12-inches, the defaced billboard ads, the wiping of their entire back catalog from print following their 1992 breakup (since restored, obviously), and — oh yes — the burning of the million pounds, Drummond and Cauty have given us so much to chew on that the music almost seems beside the point.

Except that, even two decades removed, it takes one listen to The White Room to understand why people who don't read the music press loved what these guys were doing. The copy I had on cassette in high school was only nine tracks — the first nine on the digital version — and its brevity was striking, under 40 minutes at a time when albums — especially dance albums — were routinely in the 70-minute range. Drummond and Cauty have serious dance cred, but they never stopped thinking like pop musicians. The White Room is the rare album that's a classic within rave, pop, and chart dance circles, particularly in America. Until rave's bubble into wider consciousness came in the later '90s, "Justified and Ancient," the duo's 1992 hit featuring the one and only Tammy Wynette on guest vocal, was the closest many fans were to find it on the radio until then.

The White Room isn't lean in any other way, though. The KLF's forebears were Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and in addition to that band's gift for the public statement, Drummond and Cauty were also sonic maximalists who specialized in giant hooks: "3 a.m. Eternal" features big, swishy-sounding synth sounds on the hook, and "Last Train to Trancentral" plays like the savviest commercially-minded condensation ever of the early-'90s rave anthem: Morse code piano, vaguely soggy uplifting chorus chant, astral-traveling synths, and mate-y spoken stuff buttressing the hook. The two of them didn't crowd every groove — a track like "Make It Rain (Pump a Little Harder)" has the kind of hollow springiness that typifies turn-of-the-'90s Eurohouse, with plenty of 808 boom and hissy hi-hat, and today it gives a warm glow, Drummond and Cauty having isolated the parts of the era that still sound freshest. Alas, the "Justified and Ancient" here isn't the Wynette version. But this is still a hell of a time capsule.