After a nearly six-month delay, the Russian punk-pop-rave group Little Big finally performed their concert in London. Initially scheduled for December last year, the concert was postponed due to visa issues faced by one of the band members.
The event took place at the legendary London club Clapham Grand, which has hosted British alternative music legends such as Siouxsie and the Banshees and Echo and the Bunnymen. Now, the venue can even boast of featuring new (electronic) Russian punk, much to the delight of London’s Russian-speaking community.
The concert started at eight and, surprisingly for a punk band, began without any delays from the members but also without an warming-up act. It should be noted that an opener wasn’t needed as the concert kicked off energetically, with the lead singer and founder of the band, Ilya “Ilyich” Prusikin, taking the stage in a dress inspired by the cult 90s anime character Sailor Moon. Following him was lead singer Sofya Tayurskaya, who did not share her colleague’s love for Japanese culture, appearing in a more standard concert outfit. Before starting the first songs, the singers confirmed Tayurskaya’s pregnancy, announcing that “Little Little Big” was performing with them tonight.
The band first performed several popular songs from their latest album, “Lobster Popstar” — “Hardstyle Fish” featuring American singer Little Sis Nora, “Boobs,” and “From Zero to Hero’’.Warming up the audience this way, the band then performed one of their most famous songs, “Skibidi.” During the chorus, both singers performed the famous dance from the song’s music video, with nearly the entire audience dancing along.
Marking a change in the atmosphere, the singers left the stage to change outfits while the new DJ, dressed head-to-toe in Adidas, entertained the crowd with a mix of hardbass and gabber music.Prusikin and Tayurskaya returned to the stage also dressed in white Adidas outfits styled after 70s disco. Little Big continued with a mix of songs from their recent albums, including one of their latest hits, “Pendejo“.
Following the newer songs, they performed one of their most famous tracks from the 2015 album “Funeral Rave” — “Big Dick,” which has 89 million views on YouTube. Before performing it, Prusikin had the entire audience chant “penis,” joking that it was his newest “secret” song. Next, Little Big performed another hit — “UNO,” — the song they were supposed to represent Russia with at Eurovision 2020. Due to the pandemic, the standard concert was replaced with an online festival, for which the band released a music video that has garnered over 250 million views. Like previous songs where the dance is a significant part of the performance, the singers and fans dancedtogether to the video’s choreography.
After this, the singers appeared in costumes from the “GO BANANAS” music video, during which an inflatable banana was thrown into the crowd by a fan. In addition to this song, Little Big also performed “GENERATION CANCELLATION,” which criticises Russian censorship and propaganda, and “Hypnodancer,” during which a mosh pit was formed in the dance floor, with dancers creating an empty circle and swirling and pushing each other after the chorus. The last song was “FARANDENZA,” after which the singers thanked the London audience and promised to return soon.
An interesting observation about the Little Big concert in London was the audience: it mainly consisted of non-Russian-speaking fans. Since its inception, Little Big has been releasing songs inEnglish and has used words and phrases from French, Italian, and Spanish in some later works, which may explain their enormous popularity abroad. However, the fans varied greatly in appearance — there were classic punks with mohawks, young children, and middle-aged people dressed in regular summer clothes.
Fans came not only from London: there was a minor conflict at the entrance between security guards and girls who had traveled from Cardiff — the guards didn’t want to let them in with theirsuitcases, which deeply offended the fans.
However, one fan stood out even among the diverse crowd — an Englishman wearing a T-shirt with Putin’s image. The meaning of this gesture remains a mystery, as the band members themselvescondemned the actions of the Russian government in Ukraine and left the country in the summer of 2022. Currently, Little Big’s concerts are banned in Russia, and Ilya Prusikin has been listed as a “foreign agent.”
