Sundial

22nd of January is just around the corner, so we're entering the final stage of Bicep's Isles pre-release journey. The 4th single of the Belfast-born, London-based duo is titled "Sundial" and is the most laid-back/dark instrumental they've released so far. A mystic track characterized with enchanting vocals and intense drums.

Speaking of the track, Matt and Andy share,

This is probably one of the simplest tracks on the album, it grew from a faulty Jupiter 6 arp recording. Our trigger isn't working properly and the arp skips notes randomly. This was a small segment taken from a recording of Andy just playing the arp live whilst we were just trying to figure out what was going wrong. We actually loved what it had produced and wrote some chords around it, guided by the feeling of this recording.

I couldn't be more excited about the record as we've followed every single so far. If you want to get a proper taste of what's ahead of us check out our features of "Saku", "Atlas" and "Apricots".

In case you wonder about the sample/vocals they used throughout the composition, it is a sample from the 1973 Bollywood film Raja Rani.

In regards to the sampling, Indian music has always fascinated us since the blog days, discovering it was the possible birthplace of Acid house via Charanjit Singh’s Ten Ragas to a disco beat.

Living in East London, Indian influence and music is everywhere and over the past few years, we’ve both become huge fans of Bollywood film scores, particularly the female soprano performances. The haunting melancholic epicness really strikes a chord with both of us. We feel we can relate to how similar it is to the Irish folk we grew up around from the likes of the Clannad.

Stay tuned - Bicep’s new album Isles is out next week via Ninja Tune.