As we approach the end of 2019 it is now a good time to look back on some of the notable protest albums released during the year. The albums are listed alphabetical order. Hopefully, you’ll be introduced to some new socially conscious music.
The fifth album by the Polish alt-rock band taps into the historical trauma and genocide experienced by Polish Jews at the hands of Nazi Germany. It addresses Holocaust deniers and sadly the song’s anti-fascists sentiments still apply to the present.
Here is a recap of some notable socially conscious music released during the month of February.
The latest tune by the Polish indie rock band is off their upcoming EP I’ll Find, due out March 6. The song also features a video directed by Jakub Żwirełło, which features imagery of building a snowman, then building it. According to Żwirełło, the visuals represent “the hard work it takes to build relationships, friendships and on a larger scale – local communities, which can be later destroyed abruptly and unexpectedly by tragic events like war.”
The band’s previous album Of The Sun was one of the best protest albums of 2019.
Freistadt Gdańsk’s Trupa Trupa are back after their last LP Of The Sun, with a four track EP which is as good a way as any to fall headlong into their world. It’s possibly (possibly) the most hypnotising release to date, packing in a welter of feelings and impressions in four short, “simple” tracks.
Post-hardcore, shoegaze, postpunk, indiepop: Trupa Trupa brengt al deze stijlen onder in een krachtig en schitterend eigen geluid. Het meest recente album van de experimentele indierockband uit Gdańsk werd lovend ontvangen door The Quietus en Pitchfork, maar ook voor eerdere studioalbums kon Trupa Trupa rekenen op prachtige recensies en werden zelfs vergelijkingen met bands als Mercury Rev, My Bloody Valentine, Syd Barrett en Can gemaakt. Of, zoals The Quietus schrijft: “Trupa Trupa’s Of The Sun takes apparently simple songs and brutally smashes them up”.
Nakładem amerykańskiej wytwórni Whited Sepulchre Records ukazała się split kaseta z gwiazdami teksańskiej alternatywy Suspirians.
We may never know the source of the cosmic winds that blew these two bands in the same orbit, but to have the Gdansk, Poland based TRUPA TRUPA and the Austin, TX based Suspirians sharing the same cassette is really, really magickal.
Roaring out of the gate in 2015 with their album Headache on X-Ray Records, critics fawned over TRUPA TRUPA’s no-frills Kraut rock and aggressive sense of motorik timing. Their subsequent albums landed them on best-of from Rolling Stone, Pitchfork and The Wire. “I’ll find” started as a track meant for their new album “Of the Sun” but ended up as a 22 minute stand alone piece, after some judicious editing, we present “I’ll find” in its leanest and most potent form.
You can make a real link between black midi’s fierce invention and many of the Polish acts on the bill at OFF Festival – take Trupa Trupa, whose hypnotic post-punk uses CAN basslines as starting points to deliver a psychedelia far more interesting than many of their motorikby-number British counterparts. There’s a shamanistic but unfussy quality to frontman Kwiatkowski – how soon can we have them over in Britain? The closest thing to a Turkish Pet Shop Boys (and this is perhaps the highest compliment one could give), Trupa Trupa draw a huge audience for their gutteral synth-pop – you don’t have to understand their wry, well-observed lyrics to enjoy gorgeous offerings like Koca Bir Sacmalik neither.
Fergal Kinney, Louder Than War magazine
Trupa Trupa’s monochrome post-punk is committed yet functional.
Reportaż o Trupie Trupa w BBC World Service (The World Tonight).
Now, most of us are nostalgic about the pop music of our youth. It was better then. But essentially, love, the lack of it, the pursuit of it, and the obsession with it – that’s the stuff of most pop music. And probably always has been. Occasionally though, superstar-singers and bands address major political themes, or profound aspects of human lives. And that’s the case of the Polish band – Trupa Trupa, currently on tour in the UK.