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CD
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GB 122CD
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With B FLAT A this much acclaimed quartet from Gdańsk have produced their most epic and visceral statement to date. A universe where echoes of Can, Syd Barrett, and Fugazi lovingly collide. Trupa Trupa consists of "four friends and captains" with different personalities: something that creates, in the words of singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, "troubles", which lead to "both a democracy and a polyphonic situation." You could also look to their formidable back catalog and sift through a body of work that can often sound hard, or blunt. Trupa Trupa look to confront evil. The band often does this openly and without compromise; even if the lyrics love to deal in metaphor or intrigue. Inevitably, COVID hangs over everything like a broody rain cloud. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski talks of a "visible paranoia" in the studio during the recording of B FLAT A. According to Kwiatkowski the record -- worked on when an American tour had to be canned at the last minute -- is a "kind of a study of disintegration and decomposition." Though still carrying the weight of unseen or unheard histories, whether ancient or modern, B FLAT A is the release where the provincial math rock, woozy psychedelia, and heavy folk elements finally coalesce in that most unfashionable of things, a sound that can fill a stadium. The band has always been able to shake the roots of any mountain in terms of making a noise but their new record showcases a new, outward-looking sensibility that could moonlight as the kind of sludgy, primetime pop-rock music that Pink Floyd once ensnared half the world's youth with. Listen to the airy "All And All" for example, with its gentle, organ bound melody. It could be a Beatles fly by, or a lost snippet from that period when Rick Wright took over song duties from Syd Barrett in the Floyd. In this regard it seems now that their last two releases, 2019's Of the Sun and 2017's Jolly New Songs (XRAY 136CD/LP) were brilliant teases, "existential" records that played footsie with the listener. B FLAT A is a much more upfront affair, armed with a quiver full of sonic arrows such as potential world hit, "Uniforms". This track, with its Guided By Voices-style simplicity, boils down all the nefarious, quixotic, algorithmic thoughts about "belonging" to a terrifying statement, "I wanna be all my uniforms". B FLAT A also foregrounds one of Trupa Trupa's great strengths, namely, their collective ability to make incredibly tactile, physical music. Nothing is left to chance, there is never the idea that the song and the texts have to undergo an awkward introduction after both have been created.
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LP
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GB 122LP
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LP version. With B FLAT A this much acclaimed quartet from Gdańsk have produced their most epic and visceral statement to date. A universe where echoes of Can, Syd Barrett, and Fugazi lovingly collide. Trupa Trupa consists of "four friends and captains" with different personalities: something that creates, in the words of singer Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, "troubles", which lead to "both a democracy and a polyphonic situation." You could also look to their formidable back catalog and sift through a body of work that can often sound hard, or blunt. Trupa Trupa look to confront evil. The band often does this openly and without compromise; even if the lyrics love to deal in metaphor or intrigue. Inevitably, COVID hangs over everything like a broody rain cloud. Grzegorz Kwiatkowski talks of a "visible paranoia" in the studio during the recording of B FLAT A. According to Kwiatkowski the record -- worked on when an American tour had to be canned at the last minute -- is a "kind of a study of disintegration and decomposition." Though still carrying the weight of unseen or unheard histories, whether ancient or modern, B FLAT A is the release where the provincial math rock, woozy psychedelia, and heavy folk elements finally coalesce in that most unfashionable of things, a sound that can fill a stadium. The band has always been able to shake the roots of any mountain in terms of making a noise but their new record showcases a new, outward-looking sensibility that could moonlight as the kind of sludgy, primetime pop-rock music that Pink Floyd once ensnared half the world's youth with. Listen to the airy "All And All" for example, with its gentle, organ bound melody. It could be a Beatles fly by, or a lost snippet from that period when Rick Wright took over song duties from Syd Barrett in the Floyd. In this regard it seems now that their last two releases, 2019's Of the Sun and 2017's Jolly New Songs (XRAY 136CD/LP) were brilliant teases, "existential" records that played footsie with the listener. B FLAT A is a much more upfront affair, armed with a quiver full of sonic arrows such as potential world hit, "Uniforms". This track, with its Guided By Voices-style simplicity, boils down all the nefarious, quixotic, algorithmic thoughts about "belonging" to a terrifying statement, "I wanna be all my uniforms". B FLAT A also foregrounds one of Trupa Trupa's great strengths, namely, their collective ability to make incredibly tactile, physical music. Nothing is left to chance, there is never the idea that the song and the texts have to undergo an awkward introduction after both have been created.
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LP
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LOV 091LP
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"Almost every song on Of The Sun -- the magnetic fifth album from the Polish quartet Trupa Trupa -- lands like an anthem, with barbed hooks driven by an italicized rhythm section and a chimera of crisscrossing harmonies. Throughout its propulsive 12-song sequence, this is an album that never lets up. From the relentlessly pulsing 'Long Time Ago' to the deep glisten of 'Longing,' Of The Sun is an unbroken string of hits in Trupa Trupa's idiosyncratic, self-made universe. The setting of Gdańsk is a crucial philosophical and aesthetic touchstone for Trupa Trupa. A city with a convoluted history of German and Polish rule and self-sovereignty, it is itself a living testament to the turnover of human toil. Of The Sun is a portrait of great effort and pathetic failure, of strain sublimating into nothing. Along with the notions of Beckett, hints of Syd Barrett, and the knotty complications of Wire, these emotions ripple through Of The Sun, a radiant album about the damnation of mortality. Trupa Trupa has grown inordinately in both confidence and execution during the last half-decade. Spurred on by a democratic process, where no one is the real leader and all ideas and influences are funneled into the same rich sound, Trupa Trupa channel a multiverse of feelings into captivating four-minute spans. Throughout Of The Sun, they stare into the dark and summon a light of their own, making the struggle feel not just tolerable but deceptively triumphant. Of The Sun was recorded, produced and mixed by Michal Kupicz during October and November 2018 in Gdańsk, Poland at Custom 34 studios. Trupa Trupa is Grzegorz Kwiatkowski (vocal, guitar), Wojciech Juchniewicz (vocal, bass guitar, guitar), Rafał Wojczal (second guitar, keys), and Tomasz Pawluczuk (drums)."
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CD
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XRAY 136CD
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Nothing hurts harder than a surprise ending, and the title track of this album has a real face-slap of one. One minute you're in bliss, carried away in a crescendo of spine-tingling post-rock guitars and soft, wordless "oohs", the next you're through -- the song's out the door, down the street, pulling away from the curb and into a new life. That the overall tone of Jolly New Songs is so anthemic and -- for Trupa Trupa -- uncharacteristically triumphant, only makes having the rug pulled out from under you like this seem so much more cruel, so much more funny. Perhaps the harder the fall is, the more you have to laugh. Gdansk-based post-punk-psych band Trupa Trupa are sodden in a particularly cryptic kind of gallows humor. This isn't just down to some glitch in translation -- it could be in part due to the band's art-rock origins and because their singer and guitarist, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is an award-winning poet in Poland. And then there's the fact that the band's name roughly translates to "Corpse Corpse". This is The Beatles in a universe where their most famous song was "Tomorrow Never Knows"; a Pink Floyd that split when Syd Barrett's mind did. There is no "Wonderwall" here. Instead there's "Coffin", a uniquely morbid love song that comes in the form of a seriously ear-wormy pop ditty. You can dance to this album -- check out the to-die-for funk groove that propels the Can-like "Falling". You can trip out to it -- check out the psychedelic meltdown that mutates the Wurlitzer fairground music of "Only Good Weather" into something dark and psyche-scarring. Sometimes it sounds like the end of the world (the bleak roar of "Mist"), but sometimes it sounds like the start of a new one (the unashamedly gorgeous "To Me"). The Quietus declared Trupa Trupa's acclaimed 2015 album, Headache (IDA 125CD/LP, XRAY 017CD), to be "their first moment of true greatness. This is incredible work," and suggested that these musicians were on the cusp of a Dog Man Star (1994) or Daydream Nation (1988) -- something genuinely era-defining. Jolly New Songs is that album and it does not disappoint.
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LP
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XRAY 136LP
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LP version. Nothing hurts harder than a surprise ending, and the title track of this album has a real face-slap of one. One minute you're in bliss, carried away in a crescendo of spine-tingling post-rock guitars and soft, wordless "oohs", the next you're through -- the song's out the door, down the street, pulling away from the curb and into a new life. That the overall tone of Jolly New Songs is so anthemic and -- for Trupa Trupa -- uncharacteristically triumphant, only makes having the rug pulled out from under you like this seem so much more cruel, so much more funny. Perhaps the harder the fall is, the more you have to laugh. Gdansk-based post-punk-psych band Trupa Trupa are sodden in a particularly cryptic kind of gallows humor. This isn't just down to some glitch in translation -- it could be in part due to the band's art-rock origins and because their singer and guitarist, Grzegorz Kwiatkowski is an award-winning poet in Poland. And then there's the fact that the band's name roughly translates to "Corpse Corpse". This is The Beatles in a universe where their most famous song was "Tomorrow Never Knows"; a Pink Floyd that split when Syd Barrett's mind did. There is no "Wonderwall" here. Instead there's "Coffin", a uniquely morbid love song that comes in the form of a seriously ear-wormy pop ditty. You can dance to this album -- check out the to-die-for funk groove that propels the Can-like "Falling". You can trip out to it -- check out the psychedelic meltdown that mutates the Wurlitzer fairground music of "Only Good Weather" into something dark and psyche-scarring. Sometimes it sounds like the end of the world (the bleak roar of "Mist"), but sometimes it sounds like the start of a new one (the unashamedly gorgeous "To Me"). The Quietus declared Trupa Trupa's acclaimed 2015 album, Headache (IDA 125CD/LP, XRAY 017CD), to be "their first moment of true greatness. This is incredible work," and suggested that these musicians were on the cusp of a Dog Man Star (1994) or Daydream Nation (1988) -- something genuinely era-defining. Jolly New Songs is that album and it does not disappoint.
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2LP
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IDA 125LP
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Double LP version. Ici d'Ailleurs present a remastered version of Trupa Trupa's third album Headache, originally released in 2015 on CD and cassette via Blue Tapes And X-Ray Records. Trupa Trupa play rock, come from Poland, and consist of four musicians in a guitars-bass-drums-keyboard-vocals line-up. The story of Headache would perhaps have ended there if a certain Sasha Frere-Jones, one of today's most prominent and influential critics, hadn't written in the Los Angeles Times that "one of the best rock bands doing business now is from Gdansk, Poland." While on a trip to Poland, Stéphane Grégoire, label manager and founder of the Ici d'Ailleurs label, first met Trupa Trupa at a concert by another Polish talent, Stefan Wesolowski. The group gave him a copy of Headache which he put straight on his turntable on return to France. He was taken at once and fell straight in love. Soon enough, the reactions were coming in quick. Everyone thought, like Sasha Frere-Jones, that this really is one of the best rock albums of recent years. Trupa Trupa synthesizes what is best in the genre since the early '90s - from Pavement to Slint via The Black Angels - with unstoppable, spontaneous compositions with a real freshness. But it is primarily as an album, a true thoughtful and constructed set of 11 tracks which cannot be separated from each other, that Headache really comes into its own. The third album from a band that nobody saw coming, has been deemed a rare pearl by those who have had the chance to listen. "One of the best rock bands doing business now is from Gdansk, Poland. The lead singer of Trupa Trupa is poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, who sings (and speaks, sometimes) in English. The band recalls a less woozy version of Dungen, another band who know their '60s psychedelia but don't sound like thirsty revivalists. Kwiatkowski leans into the conversational loopiness of Syd Barrett and the band flowers behind him. Beauty and intensity get equal space here." --Sasha Frere-Jones, Los Angeles Times "This is incredible work. The result is their first moment of true greatness." --The Quietus "It's 2015, everyone, and did you hear? Bands are back in a big way, and Trupa Trupa is hands-down among the very best of 'em." --Tiny Mix Tapes
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CD
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IDA 125CD
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Ici d'Ailleurs present a remastered version of Trupa Trupa's third album Headache, originally released in 2015 on CD and cassette via Blue Tapes And X-Ray Records. Trupa Trupa play rock, come from Poland, and consist of four musicians in a guitars-bass-drums-keyboard-vocals line-up. The story of Headache would perhaps have ended there if a certain Sasha Frere-Jones, one of today's most prominent and influential critics, hadn't written in the Los Angeles Times that "one of the best rock bands doing business now is from Gdansk, Poland." While on a trip to Poland, Stéphane Grégoire, label manager and founder of the Ici d'Ailleurs label, first met Trupa Trupa at a concert by another Polish talent, Stefan Wesolowski. The group gave him a copy of Headache which he put straight on his turntable on return to France. He was taken at once and fell straight in love. Soon enough, the reactions were coming in quick. Everyone thought, like Sasha Frere-Jones, that this really is one of the best rock albums of recent years. Trupa Trupa synthesizes what is best in the genre since the early '90s - from Pavement to Slint via The Black Angels - with unstoppable, spontaneous compositions with a real freshness. But it is primarily as an album, a true thoughtful and constructed set of 11 tracks which cannot be separated from each other, that Headache really comes into its own. The third album from a band that nobody saw coming, has been deemed a rare pearl by those who have had the chance to listen. "One of the best rock bands doing business now is from Gdansk, Poland. The lead singer of Trupa Trupa is poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski, who sings (and speaks, sometimes) in English. The band recalls a less woozy version of Dungen, another band who know their '60s psychedelia but don't sound like thirsty revivalists. Kwiatkowski leans into the conversational loopiness of Syd Barrett and the band flowers behind him. Beauty and intensity get equal space here." --Sasha Frere-Jones, Los Angeles Times "This is incredible work. The result is their first moment of true greatness." --The Quietus "It's 2015, everyone, and did you hear? Bands are back in a big way, and Trupa Trupa is hands-down among the very best of 'em." --Tiny Mix Tapes
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CD
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XRAY 017CD
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2015 release. Sharp as a migraine and twice as psychedelic. There is something about Trupa Trupa's music that borders on an interface with pain -- sometimes the vocals and guitar are all treble and daggers, for instance -- but then there's that anesthetic cushion of organ and the rolling sighs of the rhythms and melodies. Trupa Trupa's music teeters between a yawn and a shriek. It sways but does not stumble. There is something almost threatening about the way it affects to lose control at moments when one knows full well that it's never under any less but the most precise and steely control of its creators. These four men from Gdańsk, Poland, make rock music that swells with exquisitely executed tension and release. This is the noise one might imagine four 20th-century minimal composers making (Schoenberg? Stravinsky? Satie? Pärt?) if they had electric instruments instead of sheet music and a grudge instead of an audience. The band's lyrics are marked by the same economy and brutality as their deployment guitar, bass, drums, and keys. Everything is sparse and happening at once. Those repetitive grids of words and tones are in agreement but offer no clues. This could be the most vicious music Blue Tapes and X-Ray Records has ever released. At least one person has described it as sounding like Faust. It was recorded in a synagogue and an abandoned marine machinery plant.
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