THROWBACK THURSDAY: Bam Bam – Where’s Your Child? [1988]

With Halloween fast approaching (and on the back our review of pizzicato house track Nightmare last week), this week we turn the clock back to an acid house track dipped in horror.

“Where’s your child?
Do you know?
Look around.
Nowhere to be found.
Ha-ha-ha-ha-haaa!”

Commencing with a speeding car and a baby’s scream, and perforated throughout with the sound of breaking glass (what the hell is going on!?), Chris Westbrook’s Bam Bam released Where’s Your Child on Desire Records in 1988; echoing the positivity of the ‘Summer of Love’ with a soupçon of terror.

In Rock & Roll Always Forgets, Chuck Eddy’s analysis of 25 years of music criticism, Where’s Your Child is described thus…

“Atop the slowest, sparest throb, gongs clank, babies scream, and this deep, electronically slowed vocal – half satyr, half Satan – groans ‘No one likes to be left alone/Especailly when they don’t know right from wrong.’ He starts laughing and cackling, but nothing’s funny.”

Notably, the track was covered by experimental band Coil in 2004, as part of their Black Antlers album, a sign of the track’s macabre longevity.

Best go to bed early tonight, kiddies…!

[Kudos to Shrinechick88 for the upload]