Bicep

Isles

Isles captures the dark moment we’re living in, but those subtle hints of better things to come feel like early glimmers of light and hope.

The DJ-producer duo’s introspective yet hard-hitting second album shows just how affecting dance music can be, even (or perhaps especially) right now.

When you’ve perfected electronic melancholy as effortlessly as they have, you earn the right to bathe in its bittersweet beauty, and Isles is another masterclass in musing over moments you didn’t even know you’d missed.

It’s a brilliant pick me up, a dazzling set of songs that tap into our innermost impulses. A colourful way to remember those good times, and one that is perfectly prepared for our eventual return to the dance floor.

Gilt-edged club-leaning sounds that move both body and soul.

The layered and intricate soundscapes that embody Isles are testament to the vast and diverse musical influences that Ferguson and McBriar have explored and savoured over the years. Bittersweet and introspective, yet hopeful and spellbinding.

Bicep's sophomore release Isles is much more grown-up and conflicted. However, this is not to the detriment of their characteristic eclectic abandon.

Isles is an album that, with its paradoxical layers of complexity, not only calls for multiple and detailed listens, but rewards attentiveness.

It’s both a comfort and a lament. Never overstaying its welcome, and always intriguingly structured.

Isles’s melodies are lush or wistfully melancholic, but the beats are too tough and driving for its contents to be mistaken for something you’d play at a dinner party.

The album is graced with variety, each track with a character of its own. There are plenty of superfeelgood moments, when the music alone produces a growing sense of unfolding bliss, that some would call ecstasy.

Isles is a headphones record as colourful as its artwork, and should be enjoyed to the fullest on its own terms, the work of an act in constant flux who refuse to rest on their laurels.