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22 March 2022

B FLAT A review – The Times

From the underground music scene of Gdansk, Poland, come this excellent four-piece whose unlikely combination of driving rhythms, sweet atmospheric moments and surreal sense of humour add up to a post-punk Pink Floyd, with awkwardness and dreaminess in equal measure. All and All sounds like the kind of cosmic glide that could have come off The Dark Side of the Moon, but Uselessness rumbles with menace. Very much an authentically Polish take on rock history, this is a fascinating and unique record, driven by a real sense of urgency.

Will Hodgkinson, The Times

17 March 2022

A four star London gig review in The Times and The Sunday Times

Coming to the capital after the worst storm in 30 years, Trupa Trupa appeared to take the challenges of being on tour in the midst of such meteorological mayhem in their stride. “So good to be in London after two years of hell,” said Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, the singer of the band, from Gdansk in Poland, which took elements of progressive rock, punk and the avant-garde and infused them with a sense of humour.

16 March 2022

B FLAT A review – Pitchfork

In his life and art, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski has devoted himself to anti-fascism, which, in his native Poland, has become something of a full-time job. As a descendent of a concentration-camp survivor, he’s channeled themes of intergenerational trauma and the banality of evil into celebrated works of poetry that have led to guest-lecturer gigs at universities around the world.

16 March 2022

Haifa Interdisciplinary Unit for Polish Studies

Haifa Interdisciplinary Unit for Polish Studies and the Sir Isaac Wolfson Chair of Jewish Thought invite you to a Zoom meeting with the Polish poet and musician: Grzegorz Kwiatkowski.

15 February 2022

B FLAT A review – KEXP

This Polish band’s sixth album is a well-crafted set of ominous rock ranging from driving, tension-filled post-punk to atmospheric psych-rock, with often-dark lyrics for these troubled times.

Don Yates, www.kexp.org

3 February 2022

B FLAT A review – The Quietus

Imagine the Beatles and Velvet Underground reading Hannah Arendt while in the studio with film director Michael Haneke. That’s Trupa Trupa in a nutshell, a Gdańsk-based band who spent the last decade perfecting their balancing act between lyrical songs and crushing psychedelia.

3 February 2022

Henry Rollins / B FLAT A

“The new Trupa Trupa album B Flat A is really good.” – Henry Rollins

www.henryrollins.com

21 January 2022

Review of “Crops” – Paul Levinson

I don’t often review poetry on this blog. The last — and, in fact, the only — time I did was Andrew McLuhan’s Written Matter last February. But, once again, words without music, or with music entirely in the head, call.

19 January 2022

Twice Upon A Rhyme

What strange music: joyful, optimistic, happy, rich. It sounds like Nick Drake not on a dark side, but on a bright side of the moon. ‘Gentle Blue Cherry Bell’, from this great LP, blooms from the same garden as the one tended by Syd Barrett. And what magnificent orchestration is on this mighty ‘Twice Upon A Rhyme’ album! This joyfully psychedelic LP reminds me of the atmosphere of ‘The Wizard of Oz’, the spirituality of The Beach Boys’ ‘Pet Sounds’, and the works of Cat Stevens and Jethro Tull. But this is not an imitation but a very original thing. This is a brilliant musical lost world, a world that should definitely be rediscovered.

19 January 2022

Brooklyn Vegan

Gdańsk, Poland’s Trupa Trupa just released their new album B FLAT A, that, according to frontman Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, explores “the wasteland of human nature where hatred and genocide are not just distant reverberations of Central European history but still resonate in contemporary reality,” and does so via visceral komische and post-punk inspired rock. You can listen to the whole album below.

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