Kategoria: Trupa Trupa

„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

Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune

„Let’s Gdansk: splendid fifth offering from the Polish art-rock quartet. Super Trupa Trupa: swimming against the tides. Straight out of a Baltic port, this gripping and energetic record packs a serious punch while doing some of its best work very quietly. On first listen it’s Trupa Trupa’s relent-less pulsing energy that washes through you – their taut and well-integrated music inter-mittently recalls the thrilling discipline of Fugazi, the urgent martial interpolations of The Ex and the woozy wide-open spaces of Acetone, without ever doing so for long enough to compromise the band’s distinctive identity. Their signature move is frequent and effective recourse to moments of sombre reflec-tion, like the church organ in Mangle or the way Grzegorz Kwiatkowski’s perfectly modulated vocal hangs serenely over the churning bass riff at the start of Another Day. And Remainder’s insistent refrain of, “Well it did not take place”, is a haunting reminder of the cold tidal currents of history against which Trupa Trupa swim with such heartening vigour.”

Ben Thompson, Mojo

„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.

„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

„Trupa Trupa are a fascinating band. They are a gregarious bunch, and any time spent with them involves a fair number of drinks and a raft of increasingly absurdist stories and jokes; all in the best Polish tradition. They are also a band that unlock many things in their listeners. This writer first wrote about their LP, ‘Headache’, back in 2015, wondering how the band’s music “trundled around the outer wall of your consciousness”. Singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski once bayed out “we are a simple band, very simple” at Liverpool Sound City; something that is patently absurd in one sense (given their superbly crafted music), but maybe a statement that also masked other truths. Their music is certainly adept at opening up a number of intriguing psychic contradictions, or emotional opposites. After a number of chance meetings in a number of countries (Lithuania, Slovakia, England) we decided to take the plunge and drop the voluble Kwiatkowski a line. In true Trupa tradition, a set of initial, fairly simple questions became something much more complicated.

„The Polish quartet reaches new hypnotic heights…

In the vague realm of ‘alternative music,’ it can be hard to make an original statement when your predecessors often fall under the banner of icons. This is notably true with guitar-led groups, whose every use of a delay pedal will cause discussions on anything from The Velvet Underground to Dinosaur Jr. It’s a messy and often backward-looking business, but poses an important question – how do you reinvent the guitar?

„The reputation of the Gdansk, Poland-based band Trupa Trupa has been growing steadily over the last few years. The group, led by gregarious singer and guitarist Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, has gone from self-releasing albums at the start of the decade to signing to indie label Lovitt in the U.S. (Glitterbeat in the EU) as the ‘10s draw to a close. Of the Sun draws on wider strands of what could be broadly called “21st century post-rock”—big rhythms courtesy of drummer Tomasz Pawluczuk, a bleak sense of atmosphere that borders on goth, and Rafał Wojczal’s occasional keyboards to add extra heft.

„You may not think you need an album of abrasive psychedelic post-punk that deals with light fare like Holocaust denialism, but you do – check out Poland’s Trupa Trupa’s new one, Of the Sun, out today.”

Thierry Côté, Popdose, Exclaim

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.

www.npr.org