Tamagotchi Paradise + Lester Blackfield

As a kid, I never owned a Tamagotchi. I once had a free rip-off called Pou on my phone, but he was mainly dirty, hungry and didn’t love me as much as a real Tamagotchi would have. While the egg-shaped pet-computer only started to conquer the Netherlands in early 1997, transforming our little country into a Tamagotchi Paradise, the band of the same name that we welcome tonight looks back over a decade further. The Amsterdam-based trio has swapped the guitars of their former bands (Make Out Molly, The Hedrens) for 80s synthesizers, drum computers and tons of studio effects. Single “Live a Lie”, released last year, is reminiscent of veterans like Depeche Mode and Pet Shop Boys, while its excellent bass line would easily fit on Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia. A great opportunity to dance at UP again!

The opener of tonight is Lester Blackfield, a three-piece from Leeuwarden that sounds like their songs were written in a dystopian future where shopping mall Zaailand has been abandoned and only lit by flickering neon. The glitch cover art of singles “Sometimes I Wanna See a World Destroyed” and “Rise Above” hints that tonight we’ll be treated to a wide range of danceable hyperpop, somewhere in between SOPHIE, Charli XCX and Frysian peer Catsystem Corp.

A night of pop music that we don’t want to reificate into boxes, calls for a DJ that isn’t occupied with treating genre boundaries as if they’re that important – it calls for Coco Coquelicot. Expect an energetic set that throws different styles around, but that most importantly makes it impossible to stand still – even when the acts have long left the stage.