Trupa Trupa
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Trupa Trupa

Gdańsk, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland | SELF

Gdańsk, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland | SELF
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"Opening your third album by wishing rape on your wife and son isn’t the best way to endear your band to the listener."

Yet Polish band Trupa Trupa do exactly this on ‘I Hate,’ which is as distasteful and unnecessary as you would expect.

A torrent of rage and fury isn’t anything new in music, so the way in which it’s expressed is absolutely crucial. A blanket dismissal of the world with the teenage “I hate everyone” is lazy and uninspired, while wishing rape on your family isn’t shocking or controversial when backed with anaemic, brittle post-punk.

However, moving on from ‘I Hate,’ things quickly improve. ‘Felicy’ is much more innovative, mixing Wicker Man harmonies with jittery guitar chords and a wandering bassline before arriving at a surprisingly tender chorus. The lyrics, meanwhile, speak of concrete in eyes, mouths, throats and lungs, matched with a love that’s “tender and still.”

This isn’t an album to put on when other humans are around.

‘Miracle’ follows and quickly envelops the listener in a blanket of mechanical, Joy Division bass and cold guitar noise. Here, singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski adopts a Lennon-esque snarl while repeating the track’s only lyrics: “I guess I saw it was a miracle/walking above the water.”

Despite the overwhelming arctic feeling, moments of warmth are occasionally allowed to penetrate the album. The end of ‘Sunny Day’ sees an organ drag the other instruments along with it to a melodic climax, like a volunteer pulling survivors from wreckage to a place of safety.

The illusion of freezing temperatures, death and despair are by no means accidental. Three of the songs include the word “grave” and the other eight each allude to a nameless, terrifying end. The atmosphere is deliberately designed to be oppressive; the album constructed as an exhausting, claustrophobic listen.

This would be monotonous in the extreme were it not for the skill with which Trupa Trupa deliver their message. ‘Dei’ rides a krautrock bassline until the song unravels and stretches into a free-jazz cacophony, complete with saxophone and clarinet paroxysms, while ‘Influence’ is fearful to the core; a lumbering sense of dread underpinning the funereal pace until it arrives at the anxious conclusion “all you’re saying/is getting real.”

Unfortunately, there are so many good ideas on this record that when it falls down, it really falls.

‘See You Again’ may only be one minute and 20 seconds long, but it almost succeeds in undoing all the good work of the previous five tracks. A forgettable garage-punk rattle of revenge, murder and regret, it starts with “I went to the shop to buy a gun” and only deteriorates from there, disrupting the flow of the album with its pace, structure and mood, while its sentiment is done elsewhere in much more eloquent ways.

Nevertheless, that and the opening track aren’t enough to detract from what is a genuinely brave and exciting album. Trupa Trupa are clearly very serious about their art and on ++ they have meticulously crafted a bold and cohesive statement.

It’s the kind of music MacReady and Childs would make while they await certain death at the end of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Paranoid, shivering and horrified, this isn’t going to appeal to everyone. But for those willing to spend some time in the darkness, icy rewards await. - Quiet Terror News


"Too Strange For Humans To Like"

Supremely weird indie-rock. The weirdness of which just isn’t quite conveyed in the download that we’re offering up to you, because you really need to hear all of Trupa Trupa’s album, ++, in sequence – flickering randomly and frequently as it does from dirge, to punk jam, to crescendo rock anthem – before you grasp quite how atypical it is.
The lyrics are not just goofily abstract in the accustomed lo-fi way, they’re violent and provocative. Upsetting. The music carves out an even deeper dissonance, as it unfurls with a rare tenderness and warmth, consoling, like a slow-motion cuddle! Ice-pick guitar undermined by deep, weary sighs of brass. Angular moments of noise snuggling up against intricately-plotted basslines and rhythms, sensing no apparent contradiction.

Bands like Future Of The Left and Melvins subvert their own instincts for aggression with gibberish. But neither band sound so…. lovely…?? While doing so, as this: Trupa Trupa – Here and Then.

There are moments in Trupa Trupa’s randomised rock that remind us of assorted lost just-leftfield-of-mainstream rock groups of the late 90s and early 00s who never even achieved cult status, but were still all flavours of special to us.

Here are some of them: Shooting At Unarmed Men – Pathos Ate Bathos, Cable – Ultra Violet, Party of One – Shotgun Funeral, Marmoset – Blooms.

But Trupa Trupa are really great musicians, and they play with the sincerity and chops of The Sea and Cake or an American Analog Set. If they prettied up their messy bits, stopped singing about wanting people to kill people, and wrote proper songs instead of stark minor-key mantras they’d be all over Pitchfork. And they’d suck! So don’t do that, Trupa Trupa. You’re too strange a proposition for other humans to like you. - 20jazzfunkgreats


"Too Strange For Humans To Like"

Supremely weird indie-rock. The weirdness of which just isn’t quite conveyed in the download that we’re offering up to you, because you really need to hear all of Trupa Trupa’s album, ++, in sequence – flickering randomly and frequently as it does from dirge, to punk jam, to crescendo rock anthem – before you grasp quite how atypical it is.
The lyrics are not just goofily abstract in the accustomed lo-fi way, they’re violent and provocative. Upsetting. The music carves out an even deeper dissonance, as it unfurls with a rare tenderness and warmth, consoling, like a slow-motion cuddle! Ice-pick guitar undermined by deep, weary sighs of brass. Angular moments of noise snuggling up against intricately-plotted basslines and rhythms, sensing no apparent contradiction.

Bands like Future Of The Left and Melvins subvert their own instincts for aggression with gibberish. But neither band sound so…. lovely…?? While doing so, as this: Trupa Trupa – Here and Then.

There are moments in Trupa Trupa’s randomised rock that remind us of assorted lost just-leftfield-of-mainstream rock groups of the late 90s and early 00s who never even achieved cult status, but were still all flavours of special to us.

Here are some of them: Shooting At Unarmed Men – Pathos Ate Bathos, Cable – Ultra Violet, Party of One – Shotgun Funeral, Marmoset – Blooms.

But Trupa Trupa are really great musicians, and they play with the sincerity and chops of The Sea and Cake or an American Analog Set. If they prettied up their messy bits, stopped singing about wanting people to kill people, and wrote proper songs instead of stark minor-key mantras they’d be all over Pitchfork. And they’d suck! So don’t do that, Trupa Trupa. You’re too strange a proposition for other humans to like you. - 20jazzfunkgreats


"Trupa Trupa"

Trupa Trupa are an alternative rock band from Gdansk in Poland, which makes them a very belated first Polish band I have reviewed. Having spent some time working on the music and developing a distinctive sound, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Tomek Pawluczuk, Wojtek Juchniewicz and Rafal Wojczal have just released their debut LP.

I can recall dear old Maggie Thatcher, who despised Unions- vowing to destroy the National Union of Miners becoming a fan of Lech Walesa - leader of Solidarity. At the time there was the Cold War - while not the first time I was struck by the hypocrisy of politicians, it sticks in my mind.

The good news is that as a result of the movement which emerged in Gdansk, bands such as Trupa Trupa now have the freedom to breathe. All the Eastern European punk music used to appear in the UK via John Peel, during that period and much of it was absolutely breathtaking.

Enough I hear you cry, I don’t want history lessons, so let’s cut back to Trupa Trupa - influenced by their home-town, the music is a claustrophobic industrial electronic rock, it is impossible to listen to the out-put without visions of urban dereliction. The somber tracks are replete with strong direction and a sense of the foreboding, an effect which overall is pleasing to the ears.

Mechanistic sounds draw images of a factory life entrapment and Trupa Trupa need not move from the core of their work, which they project with a flourish. This a path ploughed by OfeliaDorme from Italy, with considerable success. - http://www.indiebandsblog.com


"Trupa Trupa"

Trupa Trupa are an alternative rock band from Gdansk in Poland, which makes them a very belated first Polish band I have reviewed. Having spent some time working on the music and developing a distinctive sound, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, Tomek Pawluczuk, Wojtek Juchniewicz and Rafal Wojczal have just released their debut LP.

I can recall dear old Maggie Thatcher, who despised Unions- vowing to destroy the National Union of Miners becoming a fan of Lech Walesa - leader of Solidarity. At the time there was the Cold War - while not the first time I was struck by the hypocrisy of politicians, it sticks in my mind.

The good news is that as a result of the movement which emerged in Gdansk, bands such as Trupa Trupa now have the freedom to breathe. All the Eastern European punk music used to appear in the UK via John Peel, during that period and much of it was absolutely breathtaking.

Enough I hear you cry, I don’t want history lessons, so let’s cut back to Trupa Trupa - influenced by their home-town, the music is a claustrophobic industrial electronic rock, it is impossible to listen to the out-put without visions of urban dereliction. The somber tracks are replete with strong direction and a sense of the foreboding, an effect which overall is pleasing to the ears.

Mechanistic sounds draw images of a factory life entrapment and Trupa Trupa need not move from the core of their work, which they project with a flourish. This a path ploughed by OfeliaDorme from Italy, with considerable success. - http://www.indiebandsblog.com


"Entry: Romantic States, Trupa Trupa, Circ"

This is Google translation from Spanish. To see original text, click red link above:

Consistent Rock Polish. Reminds me of The Dead Weather as a disc is very entertaining and accessible, but not lost in dementia and voltage, battery and threatening a keyboard which highlights the weather. It is very difficult to achieve this regularity for a debut album, while songs is surprisingly good as concrete from a region where the progressive is king. This long persistence of verses and beats on tracks longer has an air to hang alienated from Public Image Ltd., but there is some pristine song (Did you), or even some with mixed feelings in the second person (Do not go away , Porn Actress). There are three other tracks on the album for download at Bandcamp . - www.volantesdeprivados.com.ar


Discography

Trupa Trupa - EP 2010
Trupa Trupa - LP 2011
Trupa Trupa - ++ 2013

Photos

Bio

Trupa Trupa (Eng. “The band of a dead man”) was formed in 2009. Their style is a meeting point somewhere between inspirations and influences of individual band’s members, ranging from 60's psychodelia through folk, to cold wave, garage and noise.The band applies a specific aesthetics to explore the phenomena of evil. The songs’ disturbing lyrical expression is very often laid over a contrasting musical composition made up of harmonies and uplifting melodies.

They released one EP record (2010) and two full-length albums (2011, 2013). Last year they performed at The Heineken Open'er Festival (Alter Space Stage). The Polish public TV "Culture" channel acquired the four year right to broadcast the band's concert from The Gombrowicz Theatre in Gdynia and it has been broadcast five times up to date. The band was awarded The Storm of the Year Prize by Gazeta Wyborcza. "Take my hand", a song from the "LP" album was featured on the "Offensywa" compilation released by Polish Radio 3. In August this year, the band was playing at OFF Festival in Katowice (concert was very well reviewed by music press).

ABOUT NEWEST ALBUM ++

The album was recorded between Nov 2012 and Feb 2013. Most of the material was created in the New Synagogue in Gdansk Wrzeszcz with guest appearances of Mikolaj Trzaska and Tomasz Zietek. The band then moved to S4, the analog studio at Radio Gdansk where they recorded vocals. They also used the acoustic qualities of an abandoned marine machinery plant, their regular rehearsal place, to add the natural reverb to the recorded material. The album was mixed at Radio Gdansk and mastered by Piotr Pawlak at his studio.