WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Of The Sun by Trupa Trupa
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
Trupa Trupa
Of The Sun
(Glitterbeat Records)
TRUPA Trupa (“a corpse’s troupe”) hail from Gdansk in Poland, historically part of the powerful Hanseatic League and birthplace of that philosopher of pessimism Arthur Schopenhauer, iconic actor Klaus Kinsky and the calamitous Solidarnosc.
With an appropriate nod to Schopenhauer, frontman and poet Grzegorz Kwiatkowski has recently described Trupa Trupa’s music — somewhat inspired by Werner Hertzog’s film Fitzcarraldo and Miguel Cervantes’s Don Quixote — as a “meditative, pessimistic thing.”
Firm friends, the band are wedded to collective and democratic decision-making, reflected in their sophisticated and exploratory rock arrangements, delivered with superb musicianship.
Overlapping voices, beautiful guitar cadences and a spellbinding syncopation of bass guitar and drums captivate with their thoughtful innovation.
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MICHAL BONCZA recommends a compact volume that charts the art of propagating ideas across the 20th century
