CMU Approved

Approved: Trippple Nippples (TGE Gig Previews 2012)

By | Published on Tuesday 8 May 2012

Trippple Nippples

The first thing that struck me when I walked into The Macbeth in Shoreditch last night was Trippple Nippples’ homemade stage backdrop. Somewhat optimistically they’d daubed their name across a length of cloth about five feet high and 30 feet long. As a result, only the second part of their name just about squeezed onto the stage behind them, while the rest disappeared down a corridor.

The over the top, over enthusiastic, handmade feel of this banner exemplifies Trippple Nippples perfectly, and was what convinced me that I had made the right decision to wander out into the night on a Monday to catch a band I’ll have another two opportunities to see this week. It didn’t, however, prepare me at all for the actual experience of one of the Tokyo-based group’s shows.

Expanded back up to a trio since I first happened upon them almost by chance last year, the three women who make up the core group – Yuka, Qrea and Nabe – and their backing band appeared in overalls adorned with hand painted markings. These fitted the often tribal sound of their music, which whipped the sizeable gathered throng into a frenzy pretty much from the off.

You could say Trippple Nippples’ music is a reaction to the clean cut predictability of j-pop. They have all the makings of a pop group, but it’s a version of a pop group you might see in a particularly lucid nightmare. The music is largely sped up to a point where it’s like an electro take on black metal. Yuka, Qrea and Nabe rap, bark, sing and scream while throwing themselves around the stage. We often talk about psychedelic music, but until I saw this band I’m not sure I’d ever really experienced it – thinking back now, I can’t be sure that someone didn’t slip something into my drink and cause me to hallucinate the whole thing.

From what I’ve read, it seems this was one of their more restrained shows, so I can only imagine what the full experience is like. Their tendency to throw things at their audiences – buckets of popcorn, chicken feathers, etc – has seen them banned from at least two Tokyo venues. At The Macbeth, there were no buckets, leaving me wondering if there’d be no showering of the audience tonight. But never fear, while wondering why they had all started eating bread rolls during a brief moment of instrumental calm, that box was ticked with a spray of half-chewed bread to the face.

I can guarantee that you have never seen anything like Trippple Nipppples, and their show is definitely something that you want to see. Luckily, it’s not quite time for them to go home yet; they’ll play two shows at The Great Escape in Brighton later this week. First, you can catch them at The Warren on Thursday at 9.15pm, then they’ll play at 1am the following night at The Loft.

Check out the video for their closing song last night, ‘LSD’, below (and download the full version of the track here).

To read more Great Escape gig previews from the CMU team, head over here.



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