The best solidarity in a crowd is built when you collectively, accidentally, queue at the wrong spot. Saturday evening, the 25th of May, the electronic-indie-hiphop-house-hyperpop band Food House performed in the Bovenzaal at Paradiso, Amsterdam. An amazing show with the best vibe. What else would you expect when 80 percent of the audience is queer?
Food House, consisting of Fraxiom and Gupi, made a big splash onto the hyperpop scene back in 2020, with the singles Thos Moser and Ride. Their self-titled debut album became quite the phenomenon, with tracks like 8 now and mos thoser sitting on over eleven million plays on Spotify alone. Signed to Dog Show Records, Dylan Brady’s label which also hosts artists like Alice Longyu Gao and 100 gecs, Food House is a power duo that still sets the new trend and doesn’t back down (Tonight let’s do shit that gets us in cringe comps / Make some new behaviors that straight people will infringe on).
For any other artist, starting your set by asking the crowd to ‘bounce’ wouldn’t work that well, but for a band with such a dedicated and energetic audience it works perfectly, and it’s a great way to open a concert. The five percent of energy that wasn’t yet activated before the show, was definitely activated now.
The rest of the evening was packed with bombs of energy, moshpits, and the humorous but very catchy lyricism and melodies Food House is known for. Gupi, Fraxiom and the crowd all had an amazing connection between each other and the show really felt like we were all partying together. And while the concert was mostly energy, dancing, jumping, moshing – that didn’t stop the crowd from giving both flowers and candy to the artists. Where else would you see that?
The whole concert was a massive vibe. I don’t think there’s that much more to say, to be honest. It was just cool. and fun. and very gay.
And what do you mean, line up inside the barriers for the queue that has the word ‘queue’ written on it? ‘Be gay, do crime’ it was right?
Oh, and for anyone wondering how this performance shapes my opinion that hyperpop is dead (the explanation of which you can read in this article): I still stand by what I said in that article, with one major addendum: while large parts of the scene have moved on, this part of the hyperpop movement is still very much alive and it is more energetic than ever.
