*** THE KLF “The White Room” <i> Arista</i> : <i> Albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to five (a classic). : </i>

Last time we heard from James Cauty and Willliam Drummond on these shores, the English studio rats were known as the Timelords, a. k. a. the Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, a. k. a. the JAMS, who jammed together Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll” with the “Dr. Who” theme for the novelty hit “Doctorin’ the Tardis.” Now they’ve kicked out the jams for a more serious venture under a more serious name.

This is state-of-the-art British hip-hop: slinky beats a la D.N.A. or Soul II Soul, punctuated with an impressive array of studio manipulations and sound collages for a combination that works equally well as dance-floor fodder or near-ambient background listening. The imagination and skill in all that are enough to set the KLF apart.

It’s not all that serious, though. “The White Room”--recorded over the last four years--is full of tongue-in-chic self-references and boasts (a mock-serious voice opens the album singing sweetly, “They’re justified and they’re ancient,” followed by a snippet of, yup, the MC5’s “Kick Out the Jams”). That would seem to indicate that novelty is the pair’s forte, but they may be talented enough to keep it from being their damnation.