Embracing Chiptune with (T-T)b’s Suporma on its First Anniversary
“We have kind of a complicated relationship with chiptune,” Joey Dussault of (T-T)b told Wormbrain, about the fitting but rather diminutive genre pigeonhole they’ve lo been a part of. Chiptune is best known as and inappropriately lumped together with ‘video game music,’ a very love-it-or-hate-it-or-never-heard-of-it sound that often gets written off as low brow or only capable of being a gimmick vehicle, “The community repped us hard from the beginning, and there still is a really cool D.I.Y. ethos in the chip and micromusic scene — but the goal was always to be an ‘indie rock band.’”
Wormbrain spoke to (T-T)b lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter Joey Dussault on the anniversary of their latest release Suporma’s first anniversary. The five track EP was released on April 16th, 2021 through Charlotte, NC record label Acrobat Unstable and is an all killer, no filler demo disc of arguably the band’s tighest output to date.
“I’m proud of what we did on Suporma, but honestly, it was painful to make,” he admitted, reflecting back on the EP. “We were out of practice since I moved to New York, and most of the songs were (are) very emotionally unsavory for me. We tracked it in a day, then we sat on the finished recordings for more than a year before we did anything with them. [I] came real close to scrapping the whole thing. Listening back now with fresh ears and a bit of perspective, I think it holds up against anything we did before!”
Compromised of brothers Joey and Nick Dussault with friend Jake Cardinal, the outfit has been toggling downtrodden emo and lively pop punk with whimsical lyrical non sequiturs and nostalgic Sega-sonic sound bytes. With multiple save files on the music scene since at least 2015, the NY/MA trio known as (T-T)b have been in the chiptune circuit long enough to see it go from a universal punchline like nerdcore rap or wizard rock to a sincerely beloved and thriving genre.
Photo courtesy of the artist
“It does suck when people bring up Mario or Zelda the second they hear a square wave. Luckily that doesn’t happen as much anymore, probably because there are so many great crossover bands doing it right now — Glass Beach, exciting!!excellent!!, Hey, ily!, etc. It feels like a good time to embrace our chiptune side again, after trying to downplay it for so long.”
“I was really self-conscious about our name at the time,” Dussault said, about an AV Club article mentioning them on a list of wacky 2017 band names names, “but I think in a backwards way that article helped me make peace with it. I just skimmed it for the first time in a while — Soul Glo and Spirit of the Beehive are on there! Grass is Green too, which is funny because I’m pretty sure they were already broken up when that came out.”
Considering we can type it out with a basic computer keyboard, (T-T)b seems fairly tame for modern standards in our opinion. Even easier, you can say their name simply by abbreviating to “T.T.B.” when writing or speaking about them out loud, trusting their fans will know who you’re talking about. Still, the meaning of the band’s name has been long argued and W.W needed to know what the hell (T-T)b means once and for all, so we asked — Joey Dussault told Wormbrain officially that TTB stands for, “Trust in The Bit.” If we ask again next year, we assume we’ll hear the same.
“We have kind of a complicated relationship with chiptune... — ...the goal was always to be an ‘indie rock band.’”
Should (T-T)b continue on strong into the future, who knows what early hits from this era and earlier will still get played by the band live, but Dussault tells us he imagines they’ll still be at least throwing it back to the EP’s single “I Don’t Wanna Die” even then. “It will become a kind of dark joke, the older we get,” he joked.
“Then there’s that lyric in ‘ Look At All The Shit On My Dresser’ about having never finished Bluets. If I ever read the back half of that book, we might have to cut it from our set.”
To-read book stacks aside, as far as where Joey Dussault and the band goes from here? He said, “We’re cooking up a new album! Stay tuned.”
Okay, staying tuned.
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W.W: What is Wormbrain?
JD: A miserable little pile of secrets.
W.W: Thank you for sharing with Wormbrain.
(T-T)b’s Suporma is out now through the Charlotte, NC label Acrobat Unstable Records.
