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
