Bicep’s live show was a hit on the festival circuit this summer. But those were easily pleased audiences, the gigging equivalent of holiday-makers. The real test for the dance music duo would come when the nights drew in, the temperature fell and their show retreated indoors. Euphoria is harder to attain when it requires a dank schlep to and from big venues in city suburbs, the gigging equivalent of commuting.
Which brings us to Alexandra Palace, the 10,000-capacity concert hall in the remote hilly fastness of north London. (Well, it’s hard to get to by Tube, anyway.) Bicep’s Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar were playing two nights there, a sign of their accession to the top rank of electronic music’s live acts.
Childhood friends from Northern Ireland, they grew up going to trance clubs in Belfast where the music was “like being smacked in the head by a hammer”, in McBriar’s approving recollection. Then they moved to London where they immersed themselves in the sounds of the city’s myriad communities, devising DJ sets that ran the gamut from Syrian singer Omar Souleyman to Detroit techno pioneer Derrick May. Two successful albums ensued, first the eponymous calling card Bicep in 2017, then 2021’s Isles, named as though the twosome were voyaging into an archipelago of sounds.
They opened their Alexandra Palace set with two tracks from the latter, “X” and “Atlas”. Ferguson and McBriar stood opposite each other on a raised platform, sideways to the audience, each intent on their own bank of consoles. They were obscured by dry ice and framed by high-tech, see-through screens that stretched to either wing of the stage. A frisson ran through the thousands present when the first visuals appeared, a set of brightly coloured geometric patterns. But the music was less striking. The cascading arpeggios, plaintive vocal backing tracks and supple beats that filled the room sounded like a louder version of the album, as though played on a monstrously large home stereo system.
This underwhelming effect turned out to be deliberate, however. Bicep wanted to make us feel at home before flipping the musical switch. The moment of sonic disruption was announced by the arrival of the powerful electronic bassline that muscled its way into the soothing, liquidy repetitions of “Waterfall”. A decisive shift in tempo was under way. It continued with passages of four-to-the-floor beats and the peaks and drops of so-called “big room” dance music, marshalled with subtlety rather than a brash desire to overwhelm.
Unlike the superstar DJs who stand before their dancing audiences like gurning high priests, Ferguson and McBriar were anonymous at their work stations. When their faces were projected on to the screens, the images were fuzzy and hard to make out. The experience was intended to be immersive, not exhibitionist. Melodies and vocals from album tracks glimmered within the hard-edged rhythmic action, like a remix being conducted in real time. The light show and visuals were arresting. Mood changes — excitement, longing, tension, release — were well orchestrated. Bicep’s move indoors for winter has worked.
★★★★☆
