This album, say the Kinetic Stereokids "was recorded in the dark, ripe, bored and beautiful basements of Flint, Michigan”.
The ‘kids’ in question are four smart youths who look pretty nerdy on the inner sleeve photo. The cover shot of two boys playing DJ with a cheap turntable is a better guide to quirky mix of styles contained within.
The 10 basement tracks crackle with a restless kinetic energy, a fact which proves to be both a strength and weakness since the collision of competing sounds at times is too busy for its own good.
The kids are most likeable when they're not intent on showing off too much. For instance, the short track - Explosions Were Heard - works perfectly because the worried sounding vocals ("What does he want from me / Pointing his guns at me") sounds creepier alongside a tightly structured audio collage of manic canned laughter, melodic piano refrain, wah-wah guitar and distorted operatic radio samples. This kind of cut and paste job owes an obvious debt to Beck's Odelay period rap'n'roll and it's telling that the band also cite DJ Shadow as another of their inspirations.
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They are obviously determined to evade all the clichéd Indie motifs - the rocky 'Donuts Are Here' ("I feel there's a big hole inside of me") is followed rapidly by are more experimental instrumental scratch-cut up mix of 'Barefoot In The Rain' as if to hammer home the message - we can do this, but we can also do this.
With a bit of gaffer tape here and there the 11 tracks just about hold together as a cohesive whole largely because there's such a crisp, urgency to the production. The snare drum sound adds a welcome lo-fi touch and, with 'The Way Things Were', the album ends on a high with the memorable line "Would you still love me if I were real ugly".
Basement Kids is a confident, enjoyable record full of nervy impatience and positively buzzing with ideas.
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