In Amsterdam, a city in constant flux, where historic canals rub shoulders with increasingly spectacular, almost artificial transformation, M. Lucky observes, captures and transforms the era into music. Their new album Good Entertainment is born precisely from this feeling: that of living in a reality that increasingly resembles an amusement park.

An independent electro duo formed by Marcia Savelkoul (Bells of Youth) and Sam Verbeek (Bob uit Zuid, Parker Fans), Mr Lucky crafts edgy, offbeat pop that is both ironic and deeply lucid. For them, Amsterdam ‘is becoming Disneyland’. Some people seem to be made of plastic. A crowd of eccentric rich people are always looking for more distractions to numb the vertigo of power and luxury. It is this strange tension that Good Entertainment reflects.

The title track, “Good Entertainment”, imagines a subscription to Black Mirror: you pay a company every month to transform your existence into a feverish and absurd dream, simply so that life isn’t too boring. One scene sums up this logic: you come home, walk through the living room, and discover your neighbour naked, lying on your table. ‘See what happens.’ Let the situation unfold. Perhaps this is, in the end, more exciting than the constant race for wealth, with its share of anxiety, stress and strangeness.

The album was created in a nomadic, almost accidental way. With no fixed location, the duo worked on a laptop wherever they could: in a car, in the woods, in Japan, Amsterdam, France, Berlin. Their drummer lent them a studio. A little money allowed them to record for a while in Ghent. Nothing was perfectly framed, nothing was too clean, and that was precisely the idea. The disorder, in the best sense of the word, allowed life to seep into the tracks, far from a sterile production fuelled by caffeine.

Good Entertainment is about everything and nothing at the same time. By ceasing to try to ‘say something’ at all costs, the big themes emerge on their own. The duo wasn’t looking for greatness or posturing. ‘Let’s just try not to be rubbish,’ they sum up. From there, everything opened up: Trump, love, Zuckerberg, big dreams, the difficulty of finding accommodation, the lack of a future, Netflix; and many other contemporary absurdities.

Their inspiration doesn’t come from a tidy office with a pencil behind their ears and an intimidating blank page. Rather, it comes from a detour to a crazy toy shop, an immersion in an absurd place, a strange, almost purgatorial feeling. Then they return to the studio, write three songs at breakneck speed, before going to do yoga to calm down.

When it came to mixing, they even bought a cheap old Volvo V70 so they could listen to the tracks while driving. Bad idea: driving through Amsterdam is a nightmare. But this experience confirmed one essential thing: the music had to be a little crazy.

Fun and crazy. Overwhelming, even. Crunchy, edgy, slightly off-kilter pop. Serious and not serious at the same time.

As for whether the album should be listened to in one go? They themselves have their doubts. ‘No one will do that anyway.’ In the era of twenty-second sound bites, you might as well play along, or pretend to. The next album will be different. As always.