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You're listening to Sound Opinions and this week we'll be revisiting our interview with

Israeli musician tomorrow A-Fec. I'm Jim D. Rigatis. And I'm Greg Kot. But first, another band

from an area deeply affected by war, Troopa Troopa of Poland. Greg, you first told me about Troopa

Troopa when you saw them at South by Southwest in 2018 and you couldn't stop raving, they blew you away.

Yeah, it was impressive. It's very difficult to stand out at South by Southwest and I went sort of,

you know, I just wanted to check it out because the album sounded interesting. I would say the

live performance was twice as good as the album. They sent an atmosphere that was very powerful.

It reminded me a lot of bands from Eastern Europe that I had been familiar with, you know,

the pullmashes and the plastic people of the universe aspect, you know, very velvets influenced,

mothers of invention influences. But there's a darkness there. And also what struck me was the

minimalist poetry that the singer, Jagosz, Kutowski was putting over to the top of these very layered

and droning kind of backdrops. So it was a really powerful and moving experience because they were

talking about their experience with war. Poland has been like sort of a punching bag in your

ravaged decades, centuries going beyond that. And you can hear in their music. Their music

sounds haunted. Just as Poland, I think, is a very haunted country. And I say this as the the

son of, you know, Polish, Polish people who have been living in that country for, you know,

generations in my family. We actually had an event scheduled with Trooper Trooper for June of 2020.

But obviously that didn't happen because of the pandemic. And after two years without touring

now, Trooper Trooper was coming back to the States. So we're glad we can finally interview the

band singer Jagosz Kutowski. And we were able to do that just a couple of weeks ago. We are here with

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