Bulbul-Hirn-Fein-Hacken-ArtworkGerman avant-garde rock. Is your mouth watering ? It should be. As always, I am completely unenlightened as to BulBul’s heritage. What I do know is that I am going to do my best to avoid the word “teutonic” during this review. It’s not actually as scary a concept as it looks on paper, because German avant-garde rock seems to have a melodic and fun slant to it’s history (from Neu!! through CAN and others) that is definitely shared in this album. Opening up with a pacey, straight forward bit of rock that sounds like a little like the sadly defunct Acoustic Ladyland (minus the horns), the album keeps a close eye on things that people like (catchy beats, melodies and memorable vocals) without pandering to the sort of forces that leave musicians in the well worn commercial ruts that make albums forgettable. Oh…and you get to sing along in German on at least some of the tracks like the perversely funky “I hea scho lang nix mea”. There are enough strange little touches to keep the hipsters happy (I for one appreciated the band giving themselves a polite round of applause at the end of “Fisole”) and to keep you guessing, but at it’s heart this is an album that likes rocking out as much as freaking out and is equally successful at either with never a dull moment. Definitely an album to own and a band that’s well worth researching especially when their record label include such brilliantly cryptic phrases as “the glorious climax of Bulbul themselves who fear not even a rape chase of their own copyrights” as part of the album blurb.

85,000 dodecahedrons

Kim Monaghan