“Holocaust denial and antisemitism is rising around the world but, of course, in Poland too. The nature of evil is that it’s immortal… I hope things will get better, but that is why we have to protest.”
The Polish rock band Trupa Trupa, which recently toured the UK and will return in January, are unlike other acts in their readiness to directly tackle perhaps the most troublingly complex element of their country’s history: the Holocaust.
„Trupa Trupa have not been making friends in their native Poland. They come from Gdańsk, that precariously placed city over which history has so often rolled like a tank. Their big theme is collective memory – the way it is distorted, perverted and suppressed for political ends. They have set their faces against a wave of populism, authoritarianism and the duplicity of collective amnesia. They deserve to make more friends in Britain, however. Plenty of acts are doing post-punk right now, and plenty are doing psych. But few are combining the two, which Trupa Trupa do with tautness and skill. The Beatles sing Joy Division oversimplifies them, but doesn’t misrepresent them. At their recent Brighton show they also had moments strikingly akin to Plastic Ono Band. Their sound was condensed and powerful – a muscular, precise rhythm section overlaid with a flurry of ringing guitars. The songs from this year’s Of The Sun album cut to the heart of the dark road down which historical ignorance or revisionism leads. If this doesn’t sound much fun, be assured, Trupa Trupa are above all a cracking rock group, and they played a blinder. One day, if there’s any justice, the people claiming to have attended these early gigs will far outnumber the people who actually did.”
Four out of five!
„Filip Łobodziński: Kim jesteś w momencie, gdy słyszysz to pytanie: muzykiem czy poetą? Czy jesteś nimi cały czas naraz, czy jednym lub drugim na przemian, czy tylko okazjonalnie wpadasz do Poezji lub Muzyki, a na co dzień Twoja tożsamość mieszka zupełnie gdzie indziej?
„The Gdansk quartet rail against rightwing hate speech – and have uncovered a dark secret about their country in the Nazi era.
Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, the singer, guitarist and co-songwriter of Polish post-punks Trupa Trupa, is thinking of home. “At first, we said that our environment had nothing to do with our music, but we were wrong,” he says of Gdańsk, the Baltic city the band hail from – and the site of the second world war’s first battle. “The city has a tragic history.”
Channeling a wary mixture of dread and hope, the Polish indie rockers tighten the slackness of previous records into a potent fusion of post-hardcore and shoegaze.[…] More than just revel in the tension between medium and message, Trupa Trupa are the rare dystopian post-punk band to embrace optimism and levity as necessary survival mechanisms.[…] Trupa Trupa may not have the perfect prescription for a better world, but they welcome you to imagine one together.
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Songs that feel like dreams, charged with spasms of noise, gut-punch bass lines and hypnotic melodies.
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With shades of Sonic Youth, Radiohead and the kind of rainy, overcoat-wearing bands that Manchester was so good at producing in the early Eighties, Trupa Trupa jump from hypnotic trawls (Satellite) to shouty angular stomps (Turn), while bringing some indefinable quality that can come only from their lives. As revitalising as it is odd, Of the Sun is one of those curios that is really quite exciting, through sheer character and energy alone. 4/5.
***
Off-kilter melodies, dense instrumentation and lyrical explorations of the darkest side of the human condition.
***
Just really dug them a lot. Trupa Trupa. A band that is at once very experimental but also deeply commited to the kind of noise that gets you out of your seat. You can get the sense that there is a lot of social protest, a lot of noise on behalf of the issues that matter. This is Trupa Trupa. The new album is called Of the Sun out in September. This is a track that really has a great sort of heavy metal Radiohead vibe about it and I really dig it. Keep an eye of that record.
David Fricke, Rolling Stone, SiriusXM
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Trupa Trupa Convert Historical Trauma into Post-Punk Catharsis on Of The Sun.
Zach Schonfeld, Paste Magazine
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This gripping and energetic record packs a serious punch!
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Torres, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Trupa Trupa! Our song “Dream about” is featured in the new episode of NPR Music’s All Songs Considered – The Week’s Best New Songs! “They’re one of these bands that are super super loud and punky, but then, all of a sudden, it’s melodic” says Bob Boilen!
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Trupa Trupa continue to hit the mark as they experiment with simplification without excising the art from their rock.
Ian King, The Line of Best Fit
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Of The Sun pośród najlepszych właśnie wydanych albumów wg radia NPR w cyklu New Music Friday! „The band Trupa Trupa has an album out now called Of The Sun. And it is a great one!” stwierdza Robin Hilton.
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Trupa Trupa’s Of The Sun takes apparently simple songs and brutally smashes them up. A gripping slog with beautiful, luminous moments that stay with you long after you’ve stopped listening.
***
Of the Sun draws on wider strands of what could be broadly called “21st century post-rock”…The epic punch of Trupa Trupa’s songs feels like it has a grimmer edge, one that betrays a sense that things may not be as you want them to be. All too apt for the current times.
Ned Raggett, Bandcamp Daily [Album of the Day]
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This Polish band’s fifth album is a solid set of psych-tinged post-punk with a dark, atmospheric sound featuring ominous guitars, stern rhythms and haunting melodies.
Don Yates, New Music Reviews, KEXP
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The Polish quartet reaches new hypnotic heights… As summer fades and the rains cometh, we recommend grabbing this moody delight and getting lost for a little while. It’s well worth the trip.
Sam Walker-Smart, Clash Magazine
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A band that unlock many things in their listeners. Their music is certainly adept at opening up a number of intriguing psychic contradictions, or emotional opposites.
Richard James Foster, Louder Than War
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Can’t wait for trupatrupaband’s new album, Of the Sun, due this September!
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I am loving the music of Trupa Trupa out of Poland.
„With shades of Sonic Youth, Radiohead and the kind of rainy, overcoat-wearing bands that Manchester was so good at producing in the early Eighties, Trupa Trupa jump from hypnotic trawls (Satellite) to shouty angular stomps (Turn), while bringing some indefinable quality that can come only from their lives. As revitalising as it is odd, Of the Sun is one of those curios that is really quite exciting, through sheer character and energy alone.”
4/5
Jeszcze w tym roku nakładem Biura Literackiego ukaże się premierowa książka Grzegorza Kwiatkowskiego „Karl-Heinz M.”. Będzie to już czwarta publikacja autora w wydawnictwie ze Stronia Śląskiego i Kołobrzegu. Wydanie zbioru wierszy zbiega się z jesienną premierą płyty „Of The Sun” zespołu Trupa Trupa, którego członkiem jest Grzegorz Kwiatkowski.
Wydany w 2017 roku tom „Sową” domknął trylogię, na którą składają się również zbiory „Radości” (2013) i „Spalanie” (2015). W książce „Karl-Heinz M.” autor kontynuuje strategię prowadzenia poetyckiego notatnika o sytuacjach granicznych i skrajnych w duchu „Obrazów mimo wszystko” Didi-Hubermana i „Umarłych ze Spoon River” Edgara Lee Mastersa.
Nowy zbiór Grzegorza Kwiatkowskiego, który zadebiutował w 2011 roku trylogią „Powinni się nie urodzić”, w pewnym sensie przenosi nas z terenu historii na obszar tragedii domowej i pytań o antynatalizm. W książce „Karl-Heinz M.” odnaleźć można także głosy ofiar eugeniki, projektu T4, tragicznych rozbitków „Shoah” Claude’a Lanzmanna.
Autor równolegle rozwija zagraniczną karierę zespołu Trupa Trupa, który współpracuje z Glitterbeat Records, Lovitt Records, Sub Pop Records, Moorworks, Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records, Ici d’ailleurs, Anteną Krzyku, a także własną karierę poetycką za sprawą publikacji w takich tytułach, jak „Modern Poetry in Translation”, „New Poetry in Translation”, „Poetry Wales”, „Tidskriften Kritiker” i „Lichtungen”.
Torres, Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker i Trupa Trupa! Piosenka “Dream about” znalazła się w cyklu All Songs Considered radia NPR – czyli w przeglądzie najlepszych singli tygodnia!
“They’re one of these bands that are super super loud and punky, but then, all of a sudden, it’s melodic” – Bob Boilen.
Podcast od 42:10
Henry Rollins uważa “Of The Sun” za fantastyczny album i puszcza “Dream about” “Anyhow” i “Mangle” w swojej audycji na antenie radia KCRW.
„Grzegorz Kwiatkowski of the Polish band Trupa Trupa is a singer of few, well-chosen words. He addresses uncomfortable truths, the absurdity of life, and turns these terse poems into songs that feel like dreams, charged with spasms of noise, gut-punch bass lines and hypnotic melodies. Though the band released its debut album in 2015, Of the Sun is its first album to be released in America. It distills what has made Trupa Trupa a mustsee in past years at music conferences such as South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. The quartet’s music emerges from a land embroiled in turmoil; Of the Sun was released only months after the murder of their friend and hometown mayor, Gdansk’s Pawel Bogdan Adamowicz. In that sense, they are heirs to a long Eastern European tradition of protest music, from Czechoslovakia’s Plastic People of the Universe and Pulnoc to Russia’s Zooparkand Pussy Riot. The band’s impressive range encompasses the spastic punk of Turn, the wobbly atmospherics of the haunted title track and the angular funk of Dream About. They pull a redemptive refrain from the encroaching nihilism of Another Dayand mock the culture of denial in the surging Remainder.”
3.5/4.0