Bicep – Isles

In his review of Bicep’s latest album, Isles, the Guardian’s veteran music critic, Alexis Petridis comes up with this expansion on what I call the distractingly good test in the Age of Distraction. 

“[C]oming up with stuff that works equally well on and off the dancefloor isn’t the easiest trick to perform. One danger is that you end up with music that sounds dilettantish, dabbling in sub-genres for the sake of variety. Another is that you sand off too many edges, apply too thick a layer of gloss and end up with something that floats tastefully but unobtrusively in the background rather than grabbing the listener’s attention: something we’ve frankly already got more than enough of in the era of Spotifycore and playlists curated not to thrill or surprise but lull you into never hitting the fast-forward button.”

To me, Bicep’s music has always managed to straddle this thin line between the banal and the boisterous. Atlas, their 2020 single, was on my playlist of favourite songs from last year, accompanying my list of favourite albums. Their 2017 self-titled debut album was an infectious, melodic, almost nostalgic house record I’ve often put on for sessions of dancing on my own indoors. While consisting of many of the same elements that have contributed to their success, Isles is also very much a reconstitution of Bicep’s sound, a reevaluation for relevance in a world without live music. 

Combining elements of traditional house, 90s dance music, UK garage and reverby IDM with samples of music from around the world (including Jab Andhera Hota Hai from the 1973 Bollywood film Raja Rani on Sundial), Isles is something most of Bicep’s previous music wasn’t: dance music for headphones on unkempt scalps and chairs under fat arses. Of course this is how I experienced most music even before the pandemic, but this album seems to subtly reference the current paradigm throughout its runtime. From the hauntingly (mostly) wordless vocal samples to the heavy use of echo and reverb, to the understated snare sounds, many of the record’s musical choices feel like an admission that this music isn’t going to be packing clubs anytime soon. 

Evolution of any sort isn’t easy, so I’m really impressed by this album’s being not only coherent, but also intensely listenable. I’m glad it opens the account for 2021 albums on Stranger Fiction.