Those Foreign Kids – Zero Gravity Somersaulting Craze

It’s easy to make really, really boring records using this screaming, thrashy style. Or, ones that quickly lose their initial charm. I think this isn’t and won’t.

It’s easy to make really, really boring records using this screaming, thrashy style. Or, ones that quickly lose their initial charm. I think this isn’t and won’t.

http://thoseforeignkids.bandcamp.com/

Oh, my giddy aunt what a racket. This is one of those LPs that doesn’t really do much apart from compel you to listen to it again and again. It’s delirious, infectious fun, even if you do need a sit down with a cuppa afterwards.

Plastic Cats of Neverland kicks the whole thing off; a racket that sets screaming, rasping vocals over the top of what sounds like some kind of delinquent industrial saw let out on day release. Half way through the beat decides it wants in on the action, pushing the melody out of the way to veer wildly between issuing a steady industrial stomp (like some kind of pressing machine) and a giddy bareback charge downhill.

Golly.

Kafkaesque squeezes yet more ear bleeding sounds from the guitars. There’s an element of Swell Maps about all of this, maybe it’s the coruscating guitar runs, the ever changing tempo, the “splashing”, scattergun quality about the sound as a whole. A Flemish answerphone voice kicks off the “familiar sounding” Soviet Modular Space Station*, which crashes and blurts about for a good five minutes. There’s a late 70s sound to it all too, (maybe the title allowed some cultural junk to float free of its mooring in my memory). Actually they do sound like an early Mute release. A scuzzed up and poppy take on Warm Leatherette perhaps? Or is that utter bull on my behalf? Who cares.

(* moored in Idiot Joy Showland it seems)

Two tracks about bears follow, Bear Picnic is an angsty run through replete with camp horror squeals standing in for the vox. Inevitably the whole thing ends up a scream-fest. Then we have Bear Blood, which, as the title suggests, is more sanguine, but still makes a racket in an old fashioned “rawk” kinda way. You dig? HVNTR begins as a sort of muted coda to Bear Blood before erupting in the refrain.  Sonic Youth Hostel grumbles on in a muted key too. You may note that around this point, a sort of detached scuzzy groove settles over the record. like some warm fuggy day. It’s dense and thick to the taste, but not something that lets the record down. Rather, it’s a nice counterpoint to the high register battering we got before. Get Eaten starts off with a lot of cascading wobbling guitars spreading their gloop all over the track; they sound a teensy weensy bit like the guitars on Garlands but pushed towards a sort of 60s pop waltz structure. I’m not sure that makes any sense on reading back, but I’ll go with it. Why not? It’s a lush sound.

It’s easy to make really, really boring records using this screaming, thrashy style. Or, ones that quickly lose their initial charm. I think this isn’t and won’t.