Kategoria: Trupa Trupa

Da wächst langsam etwas Großes zusammen, diese Feststellung hatte ich zu „Headache“ geschrieben. Das war 2015, und es handelte sich dabei um das dritte Album der Band Trupa Trupa. Zwei Jahre später erschien „Jolly New Songs“, und das war schon ein toller kompakter Brocken, aber auch ein wenig undurchsichtig, dabei sehr reizvoll und auch schon großartig.

I’ve seen Trupa Trupa twice this year, once a month! And both times their incredible songs have taken on a slightly different life. Friday at MENT Ljubljana they again proved why they are one of the best rock bands right now. No song ever goes exactly where you’d expect – they have sweetness, aggression, light and dark in the sound woven from alt-rock, math-rock, shoegaze and classic pop.

Polish band Trupa Trupa is a far more complicated picture to draw, as they take to the stage in Ljubliana Castle. Having seen them as a three-piece in January, their usual fourth member added even more complexity to this enigma of a band. A singular type of rock band, that exist in our understanding but also just outside of it, their pained vocals dance with a vibrant rhythmic backdrop, crushing walls of noise and psychedelic pop melodies. When their violence dissipates for calm, they hit heights of engulfing beauty. Every audience I have been in watching Trupa Trupa has left stunned, gasping for more but not fully understanding why – that is a special kind of band.

James Thornhill, www.undertheradarmag.com

Trupa Trupa are a very moreish rock band boasting undoubted skill and killer songs, who trade in a mix of Weimar cabaret, brutal math rock and frazzled psychedelia. Despite seeming to pay an updated libation to the greats of the canon, there is something very un-rock about them. They also seems to be there in front of you but not there; a sensation that has unnerved every audience I have seen them play to. Singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski obviously enjoys this tension, his pre-song monologues used to both invoke a sense of future-past and a feeling of remove. Is he being ironic? Maybe. I wonder if Trupa Trupa are classic rock’s undertakers, every gig carrying the coffin reverently to its final resting place. Playing the city’s castle they seemed intent on creating an unearthly rumble (helped a lot by some booming bass and very strange samples), and charming out old memories embedded in the stone walls. They are a fascinating act.

Richard Foster, www.thequietus.com