Trupa Trupa
Jolly New Songs

I have an unhealthy passion for albums discovered at the end of the year. Every year, I find myself falling in love with an album just before creating an ideal list of the best of the past year, and 2017 was no different from previous years.

Children of a new millennium where, through the internet, music can spread everywhere, the four Polish musicians of Trupa Trupa well represent the possibility of producing and conceiving music of clear Anglo-Saxon descent, of excellent quality, even outside the borders of the empire. What makes them special is their ability to mix very different influences within the same track, without the listening experience seeming schizophrenic or a mere display of musical skill. To define their music, one might invoke the all-encompassing hat of psychedelia, but that would only serve to limit their open and boundless approach; the rest is their own doing. A bag full of strange things, like stripped-down and chanting post-rock that turns doom (“Against Breaking Heart of a Breaking Heart Beauty”), or Thurston Moore accompanying dark dances, ending up resembling Blonde Redhead (“Mist”), or finally, noise songs with unexpected and beautiful melodic openings (“Falling”). The pace is generally slow, meditative, and hypnotic, sometimes leaning more towards the psychedelic (“Leave It All”, “Never Forget”, and “None Of Us”) and other times towards the numbing chant (“Love Supreme” and the more upbeat “Only Good Weather”); even including a track somewhere between electrified Barrett and shoegaze (“Coffin”), and a title track that starts Sonic Youth and ends Godspeed You! Black Emperor.

If one criticism can be leveled at Trupa Trupa, it's that they bring little or nothing of their native musical feelings to their music: just by listening to the album, one would not guess their origin outside the USA/UK axis.

Anyway, a great album and a band to watch out for.