Trupa Trupa, The Room

Event information

TRUPA TRUPA
Gdańsk, Poland
https://trupatrupa.bandcamp.com/

Trupa Trupa are a post-punk band from Gdańsk, Poland, known for their unique blend of brooding alternative rock and psychedelic influences. They combine dark, introspective melodies with rich, experimental sounds to create their own space in the world of alternative guitar music. Their music has received international recognition, with the Los Angeles Times calling them "one of the best rock bands doing business now" and The Guardian highlighting their mix of "off-kilter melodies, dense instrumentation, and lyrical explorations of the darkest side of the human condition." Pitchfork said : The Polish band’s latest shows that they don’t make protest music so much as process music, indulging the ugliest aspects of post-punk and post-hardcore as a means to protect what’s good and beautiful in this world." Other prominent Trupa Trupa supporters include Iggy Pop and Henry Rollins.
After their sell-out gig in Manchester before Christmas, Tuff Life Boogie is delighted to have secured for Preston one of only two UK club dates Trupa Trupa are playing alongside their appearance at Bearded Theory Festival in Derbyshire.

The Room
Liverpool, England
https://theroomtheroominthewood.bandcamp.com/

In the next century, people will stumble across The Room leader Dave Jackson's prodigious output since 1979 and will be amazed by how his talent did not get the credit that it warranted at the time. Anyone who checks the guy's track record, which also includes Benny Profane, Dust, Dead Cowboys, The Cathedral Mountaineers and The Room in the Wood, will discover that Dave is now responsible for at least a dozen fantastic albums, all of which should be set texts for anyone into literate, melodic indie-pop with great vocals and lyrics.

In late 2021, Dave reconvened with his oldest partner in crime, bass player Becky Stringer, and together they've revived their earliest incarnation as The Room, who previously operated from 1979 to 1985. Championed by John Peel and the music press, and ticking all the right boxes with their spiky, tightly-wound post punk sound, The Room somehow missed out on the commercial success achieved by Merseyside contemporaries Echo and the Bunnymen and Teardrop Explodes, by what can only have been either bad luck or bad management.

In 2023, The Room, now also including original drummer Clive Thomas, put out a magnificent comeback album, 'Restless Fate', which follows a protagonist as their life pans out, with lyrics that range from growing up in the 70s (‘Red Admiral’) to social mores in the 2020s (‘Crying Face’). It is a really satisfying listen and, rather than resting on their laurels, it dominated the band’s set list at shows, with a couple of older numbers, ‘Things Have Learned to Walk that Ought to Crawl’ and ‘New Dreams for Old’ also making the cut.

During this show at The Continental, The Room will be playing the whole of their new album, ‘The Telling’, released last year, an epic folk horror song cycle about Rusalka, a shape-shifter, trapped in her aquatic human form, who returns to wreak vengeance upon a priest and villagers who murdered her lover. The Room released a single from the LP, 'Nemesis' in Feb 2025.

In the afternoon, The Continental will also be screening ‘Violet City’ , the film Dave Jackson put together in the mid 2010s with Director and Producer John Maxwell, which features a gothic fantasy script Dave wrote about a character on a quest to discover the truth about his mother’s disappearance, unaware that his recently acquired violet eyes will lure all kinds of villa
ny to him, from crazed aristocrats to immortal inter-dimensional beings.

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see Violet City followed by a great show from two amazing bands. This will be one of your gigs of the year, no question. .