Darko Rundek’s deranged folk cabaret, teetering on the edge of sanity and incorporating kaleidoscope influences will be immediately recognisable to those who know him through Apocalypso or his former group Hauser.

The album’s sub-title Migration stories and love songs is most appropriate in a work trying to sum up “loneliness of the exile and the placelessness of the Internet, the reality of modern metropolis and the utopia of a love that transcends all borders.” The multiple voices on the album, its frequent shifts of pace and style and its unpredictability gather together the idea of exile, and the warm grooves, such as the one he sets up in ‘Sensimillija’ are islands of peace in the noise of the rest of the album, with Rundek’s growl reminding the listener this isn’t a place to relax.

The album kicks off with the dark ‘U-Bahn’, a multi-lingual introduction to its themes, closely followed by ‘Slick Senorita’s’ horns blaring to plucked Spanish guitar, to samples of car horns and a manic Rundek raving over the top.

‘Sensimillija’ is one of the standout tracks, exploring the narrative of a lonely man seeking solace in the internet and a smoke although it’s hard to pick tracks out of so varied a selection, and such imaginative production. The Croation folk element is certainly in evidence, although so is a smattering of jazz, rock ‘n roll, dance and heavy rock (in the subtly building backing in ‘Highlander’. This approach is of a type that reminds me of the post-apocalyptic cabaret of Boris Kovac: it maintains the recklessness of Kovac although instead of placing its subjects in a future dystopia it is all about the present.

It’s intelligent, witty, dark and engaging. For something outside your safe sphere of music, go where Darko Rundek can be found.