Irish duo Bicep flex their musical muscle as Isles album hits Top 5 in Ireland and UK
Bicep's Isles record has debuted at number two on both sides of the Irish Sea. Picture: Dan Medhurst
Ask Andy Ferguson and Matt McBriar of chart-topping electro duo Bicep to describe their perfect night out and they’re soon gushing about the unique energy found only in stuffed-to-the-rafters clubs in Cork, Dublin, Belfast or Waterford.
“The licensing laws in Ireland mean you get these short bursts of energy on a Saturday night. That’s been a big influence on us,” says Ferguson of an era before Covid. “You have a four-hour night out. That’s true in Belfast and it’s the same in Dublin and Cork."
When it comes to diagnosing the special atmosphere specific to Irish clubs at the business end of the weekend, they are in the perfect position to compare and contrast. The Belfast musicians have brought their epic soundscapes – think the Chemical Brothers in their prime meets a double-gatefold concept LP from the mid-1970s – to Glastonbury, Coachella Barcelona’s Primavera Sound. And had 2020 worked out a little differently, they would have performed to a combined audience of 10,000 at Brixton Academy in London.
Yet a sense of Irishness runs though the veins of the pair, who relocated a decade ago from Belfast and London. That push and pull between two islands and two identities is explored in their extraordinary second album, currently creating a commotion in the charts and sending reviewers into a collective faint. As the title indicates, “Isles” is about Ireland and Britain and the role each has played in Bicep’s emergence as the most engaging and innovative new forces in electronic music.
“It really isn’t focused on Brexit,” says Ferguson. “It’s more to do with the mix of being Irish and spending a lot of time in London. Culturally the two places feel very different. Ireland is more conservative. But the underground is very energetic and explosive. In London, there are more cultural influences. and a lot less licensing. The clubs are open 12, 20 hours a day. It’s a big melting pot. Whereas in Northern Ireland it’s a lot more condensed.”
Isles has debuted at number two in the Irish charts, where it sits between Dermot Kennedy and Harry Styles. It’s gone in at number two in the UK too, just behind Bring Me The Horizon. So the record has clearly resonated with the public. Critics are equally keen and have likened Bicep to techno godfathers Orbital and the aforementioned Chemical Brothers.
“We’re very humbled to have those comparisons,” says McBriar. “That’s the definitely the era we grew up in. Late 1980s, early 1990s and through to the 2000s. Those were the big albums we were listening to as kids. And also stuff by the Aphex Twin and Brian Eno.”
Not that Isles is in any way a facsimile of those artists. Ferguson and McBriar are following their own path, whether by sampling Israeli goth popstress Ofra Haza (Atlas) or building a track around 1974 Bollywood song Jab Andhera Hota Hai (Sundial). From the whole cloth of classic 'arena' electronica, they’ve forged something unique and contemporary.
“We never want to sound like the Prodigy. We never want to sound like the Chemical Bothers,” says Ferguson. ”I don’t think we particularly do. I suppose it all comes from a similar UK underground sound. It’s about making music that is for more than just clubs. With things like Spotify it’s easy to digest music all day now. People don’t just listen to electronic music in a club. They might listen to it as they’re out cycling.”
With the pandemic ongoing, live performance is very much on the back-burner. Still, they’re understandably frustrated at the British government’s recent spurning of an offer from the EU of visa-free touring.
“We both have Irish passports,” says McBriar. “But a lot of our touring crew have UK passports.
Isles was around 70 per cent finished when the pandemic struck. And yet it feels as if it could have been created specifically as a panacea for this weird and becalmed moment. At a time when our horizons are vastly diminished, the record makes the world feel that little bit bigger. It takes you by the hand and leads you off into the unknown.
“People have a lot more time to think for themselves,” says McBriar of the degree to which “lockdown factor” has impacted on responses to Isles. “The repetitive techno we grew up with is quite hypnotic in its own way. That definitely worked its way into the album. We’re conscious of the meditative quality that comes from old techno.”
Lockdown has played havoc with all our lives. However, for Bicep it’s proved particularly challenging. They were forced to postpone an entire slate of dates, including two nights at 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy and one at the Olympia in Dublin. Covid made itself felt in an even more chilling fashion for McBriar, who contracted the virus early in the first wave.
“I got it back in March,” he says. “It was pretty mad. It was all kicking off. At that time people were still wondering what Covid was. I ended up getting it at the very beginning. It was mad.”
As for the future… well, things are obviously up in the air. Bicep will play a livestream concert in February and are reworking much of Isles specifically for the dance floor. Beyond that, they’re of course frustrated and dismayed at having to put their touring plans on hold. However, they’ve insisted they won’t be going back on the road until the well-being of the audience is 100 per cent guaranteed.
“Last year, the entire rug got pulled,” says McBriar “I don’t think at the time people in the UK were taking it very seriously. They thought it was just a temporary bump. We were looking at the long term implications. And we realised that our year was gone. It’s been carnage.”
“We’ve made an agreement not to come back until it’s completely safe,” says Ferguson “We’re not going to rush our gigs back. The vaccine is not even rolled out to more than 10 per cent of the population in the UK yet. It’s still not safe and it’s a long way from being so.”
- Isles is out now. Bicep will perform a global livestream concert on February 26. Details at: bicepmusic.com
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