Bulbul

Repress on white wax limited to 165 copies. Bulbul's Manfred Engelmayr and Dieter Kernhave enjoyed an especially bizarre career path, having a stint on that great Austrian basecamp for laptop noise, Mego (their 2004 Drabule EP) and recording a further five albums within the past ten years. This latest record boasts a production job from Patrick Pulsinger and, perhaps least likely of all, guest spots from Carla Bozulich. That's right: Pulsinger and Bozulich together at last. The alt-country singer fits right in with the tentatively paced electro-goth tendencies of 'Shenzhou', her vocal serving as a focal point for all the creepy percussion and dissonant synth tones that hover around the mix. Bulbul's sound tends to be a little more forthright than that however, sounding like a glossy, digitised Queens Of The Stoneage on 'Tighten', while experimenting with Chromehoof-esque disco-metal crossover material on 'Daddy Was A Girl I Liked' and 'When Sun Comes Out'. It's very hard to comprehend that these people were ever on Mego. Their anything-goes, freestyle metal approach isn't unappealing though, and Bulbul 6 has a decent helping of blistering riffage (check out the ace sub-two-minuter 'Dust In My Zimmer') and high spirited euro-rock flamboyance.