BULBUL

5

LP, eigenverlag?

After ten years of playing everywhere almost constantly (and gaining the dubious of most-reviewed band in the realms of the Cracked-verse) there are still a lot of people who don’t know them and who get flabbergasted when seeing them play live. Well, Bulbul is one of the only bands on this planet to be a proper support to both Pere Ubu and Melt Banana (and probably outplaying them both as well). Seeing them play live with Melt Banana they kicked out the jams and chose to chase the rock-pig through town. Still they were obviously too avantgarde for some of the straightforward rock/hardcore-kids going for the (neverthless really great) staccato-stabbing of Melt Banana. Maybe it was their way of hitting on the grove of one basic rockriff for way longer than the posers in the moshpit expected, thereby leaving them breathless, waiting for the hook or the culminating chord change that never came. As you know, music listeners, especially those more into celebrating themselves during a concert than being interested in the music itself, are the most conservative lot around. Close to being completely fascist in their musical reception about the worst thing you can do is turn down their expectations, e.g. a hookline, a break, three-minute songs. Actually, Bulbul are quite upfront about making it clear that they don’t care one bit about your expectations, by dressing in mini-dresses on stage, for instance, but the self-deception of drunk teenagers or early twens is hard to beat, especially when they are looking for some good times. Maybe it is their way of mixing experimentalism and weirdness into riffage. One guy turned to me and asked: “What do you call this kind of music?” and I answered: “it’s music.” And he nodded: “Can’t really say, huh?” Yeah, fuckhead. What a great night.

The current three-man situation of Bulbul seems to be the longest lasting version of the band that ever was. That makes the band enormously tight and dense, able to break into a new song on a glance and even going over a few mistakes here and there (not that you wouldn’t notice if they wouldn’t tell you) without breaking out of their verve. Well, not on this album of course. On their fifth record they’ll take you through a lot of very electronic stuff, teutonic beats and new wave disco basslines, mystic gregorian chants, echoy metal scraps and general humdrum (no, that’s not a member of the band) before turning on the amps and distortion pedals. DDKern is one of the best drummers around. He is hard, tight and on time, without any fuss or ego he lays down the fundamental timework for the bass, the guitar and the vocals to dwell on. Derhunt’s bass is no less tight, distorted and played with a punch. Fredl aka raumschiff oberschenkl is still mastermind of weirdness and originality, using voice and guitar to whatever he wants to. I wonder how the basics for song-building are distributed between the members. The distinction of rhythm-section and lead-section is not appliable here. As the question for a sense is. Either you’ll get it or you don’t. And even if you don’t, you probably already have or at least will in the not so distant future.

It takes them to the third song to get to rock as in guitar rock – in the bulbul-kind of sense of the word. “mirror mirror muschi” is bummer of a rock-riff-song and the first one on here that starts with at least some kind of riff/verse/riff-structure. But then they’ll go into a minimalist restructuring of that riff over and over again. That alone will leave those music-bosses at FM4 or other alternative stations helpless, when they go looking for that one song to take from the record, to put into their indie-charts and playlists. Consequently, they should take a random part of the record and use that, not even caring if it covers parts of two songs or not, and play that. And use different parts at random over time, just like Bulbul songs might start and stop anywhere and anytime. But that’s too dangerous for them. They need something to smoothen out their music-flow so as not to distraught listeners, to generate reach and thereby generate revenue. All of that are words not important to Bulbul in any sense. Moreover that song ends with a loud brrrrrt-sound after various repetitions of that riff. Typical for Bulbul, but wrecking the nerve of straight listeners all around. Good.

The scope of the experimentalism and weirdness that Bulbul is able to hand down with ease and stature has grown immensly in the last years. Nowadays, they treat expanded noise parts as solidly as breaking into a full fledged heavy guitar riff or drawing a bass-led melody into a minutes-long pleasure of harmony that grows into hymnic proportions, even if drenched by guitar noise. And their scope is expanding still. This makes up a lot of the attraction of bulbul and their importance for posterity. There seem to be some excerpts or re-recordings of “Jazz 1,2,3,4” on here as well, if the tracklist is anything solid to go by, but who knows. I was never able to name any songs of theirs by their tracknames, though I keep hearing some of the words and riffs for years now. Damn, I know them now for so many years and I realize I have no idea what keeps them going. Bulbul records, and this is their fifth full album plus a bunch of tapes, singles, projects (Fugu!) and other stuff plus multi-day concert-rows, so that’s some kind of basis to go on from, should be swallowed as a whole. Just, you know, just get them into your system and you’ll see what they’ll do to you. You’ll see if it does you any good by growing your collection of Bulbul-records grow, learn about their costumes and finally catch a stick with your forehead.