By Jake Paterson, Music Editor
Ashnikko is synonymous with excess. More personality, more noise, more colour. Expecting a show from her is then an expectation to bring your fullest and most extravagant self. To scream about the intrusive thoughts that plague you everyday and to do it amongst the warmest collection of people.
Coming on stage late with a lighting sequence not unlike one from RuPaul’s Drag Race, Ashnikko entered with two dancers to ‘You Make Me Sick!’ the lead single off of her latest record Weedkiller. ‘Do you know this song? Prove it then.’ she asked, before pelting us with a trap-beat led powerpop anthem ‘STUPID’. We were under her command from the outset.
Having just played Alexandra Palace in London, the Marble Factory was certainly a more intimate setting for the now global-star and she knew it. ‘I can get so close, I’m gonna get weird on this stage and give you some real uncomfortable eye contact’ she promised and delivered. The brattiness of ‘Slumber Party’ turned to the overwhelming, heart-attack inducing, ‘Worms’ and ‘Choke Hold Cherry Python’ pounding the crowd with noise. Luckily it didn’t pass through us but drew us even closer inwards.
After reciting a poem about encountering a siren in the woods, which was definitely a left-field switch up in the proceedings, Ash told us that she was drinking ginger tea as illness had crept up on her toward the end of the tour. Definitely feeling a little fatigue she noted: ‘I love touring in latex and having little things pasted on my body’ and suggested that ‘I think I peed my pants - you did not just see that happen.’ She was hilariously brilliant, rinsing f**kboys to dry and finding pleasure in excess without fear of what it might look like afterwards.
Visually the huge inflatable weed that hung above the stage placed us in a foreign planet, and the dance routines were tribal and attractive. ‘Say “I know the routines Ashnikko”’ she asked us, following up with ‘Cheerleader’ by saying ‘that was only the warm up.’ It was command and response in an effortless and stupidly fun way.
‘For those of you here for my little TikTok songs this will shock you’ she said before playing ‘Manners’ with festive lyrics like ‘fat p*ssy like Santa / that d*ck tastes like Yankee candles’, then launching into a compilation of all four Halloween songs in medley fashion. You literally had no idea what was coming next.
Closing out with the smash ‘Daisy’, we were exhausted and jubilant.
Featured Image: Press
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