This selection was made by Gen Z son.

Gen X dad says:

Bicep are two DJs from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, who were childhood friends, formed the group in 2009. They subsequently released a few tracks and formed their own record label Feel My Bicep. In 2014 they relocated to Shoreditch in London. Isles, released in January of this year, is their second full-length album. They made their live debut in 2015 at the AVA Festival in Belfast.

The group’s style is well suited for outdoor electronic festivals. It is easy to picture the sun setting on hundreds of people dancing and grooving to their blend of 90s era electronica, Chicago house, and techno. That being said, it is also easy to put on this record and just chill in your living room.

The inclusion of a sample from the late Ofra Haza on the first track Atlas is a wistful call back to an earlier age of dance music. X, which features vocalist and producer Clara La San, is an Orbital-style epic ala The Box cut down to a more manageable five and half a minutes.

Canadian cellist and composer Julia Kent guests on Rever and brings to it her own vocals as well as Balinese instrumentation. It leads well into the following Sundial, a track which exemplifies an issue with the album as a whole. The build up on many tracks is energetic and compelling, but there’s some vaguely dissatisfying about their conclusions. In a live situation, where these songs would be merge and morph with each other, their structure probably works well. But, broken into individual tracks some of them are just left hanging.

Highlights: Atlas, Saku, X, Rever, and Hawk.

Gen Z son says:

Out of the many kinds of music that I’ve listened to in my life, one style I’ve always liked is electronic music. When I’d first heard of the synthesizer and bands like Kraftwerk some time ago, I was mesmerized by the futuristic sounds on albums such as Trans-Europe Express, and apparently, that’s not an uncommon reaction, seeing as the title track of said album found its way into hip-hop culture.

But anyways, one electronic group I had recently discovered through CHIRP radio (see my review on Wife Patrol’s debut album for more on the station) is Bicep. They originate from the city of Belfast and have put out 2 albums, a self-titled release in 2017, and Isles, which was released in January of this year.

On first hearing the album, you’d probably (like I did when first hearing the song X) think that Four Tet dropped something new and that you somehow weren’t aware of it. Clearly, this album and the Bicep project was influenced by several IDM acts – there’s some hints of Aphex Twin’s famed style of ambient techno, the aforementioned Four Tet, topped with the fast-paced acid techno energy of Orbital. Several vocal samples also pop up throughout the album, with some songs even having actual lyrics. My only complaint about the album is that some of the songs seem a little predictable, but they never ruin the feel of the album for me.

In short, Isles is a strong set of IDM tracks, with just enough energy to spare. One thing I’d like to say before I end this review, however, is that the song X is a pretty big highlight for me. It’s the song that was playing on CHIRP the day I discovered them, and it’s a damn good one at that.