Apparently the JUE Festival’s going gonzo on us, as Japanese synth-punk band Trippple Nippples prepare to bring their existential angst and scantily-clad weirdness to 2 Kolegas tonight. What can we expect? “Mayhem, mess and happiness” in the form of tridents, feathers and… well, do you really want to know?

About three years ago, unsatisfied with the Tokyo live music scene, Yuka Uchida, Qrea Niple and Joseph Lamont decided to do something new. They ended up taking live shows into the realm of performance art and creating spectacles like this, to the delight – and probably horror – of audiences worldwide.

Trippple Nippples have struck a balance – sometimes tenuous – between art and music, and will release its first album this summer following the Fuji Rock Festival. But the band’s bread and butter is still its live shows, during which all bets are off. Expect incredulity and awesomeness.

Anthony Tao spoke with Lamont last night just an hour before he was to take the stage in Shanghai.

An ad for Saturday’s show describes you guys as “performance art that you can dance to.” Is that an apt description of what a Trippple Nipppples live show is like, or would you add to that?
You get messed up, basically. Yuka and Qrea sort of play around with people, explode flower-bombs at people, get people wet… if you’re worried about that or messing up your hair, you should probably stay away.

It’s punk attitude mixed with club culture. The live show is where it all comes together. I’m not that interested in self-absorbed bands. I want to see something I can experience and do together. Expect to have fun and be allowed to have fun. Explosive, fun energy is what we’re about.

What makes you unique?
We’re not just about art or fashion or music, but we’re about a complete experience, and that’s what we want to be the main thing for us.

There are a few other bands doing this sort of thing, but for us it seems to be the most natural thing. I guess we’re making our own world as we go along. The minute you decide to do that, it’s going to be different from other people.

Can you articulate what that world you’re creating might be?
Not really. It’s a little bit abstract but has something to do with the innocence of being, of having pure fun and being surprised by new things, like the way a kid would see new things, I guess.

We’re not very much about intellectualizing things or trying to be morbid or whatever, we’re just trying to have fun and we want other people to have fun with us.

What’s the craziest thing you guys have ever done on stage?
We set some guy’s hair on fire with a firecracker cannon once. It was a friend of ours – he’s a model so he’s a really tall guy – and we shot this cannon and his hair caught on fire. He was okay after that. That was probably the closest we’ve come to actually injuring someone.

We’re pretty careful about that kind of thing – he was just too tall.

The JUE festival organizers said about your show, “China has no idea what is about to hit it.” Do I even want to know what that might entail?
Well, behind me right now there’s a big bucket of pink paint and an electronic fan and a whole bunch of crap. [Writer’s note: not literally on that last one.] And feathers.

I never really know…

Trippple Nippples play tonight (Saturday, March 20), at 8.30pm, at 2 Kolegas. RMB 50.