Production team Bicep return with new single ‘Water’.
The duo’s recent album ‘Isles’ won across the board acclaim, re-tooling club tropes for their own creative methods. A stunning live show was built for the album, with Bicep taking their performances across the globe over the past 12 months.
Set to play London’s Alexandra Palace on December 2nd and 3rd – both nights are sold out, by the way – Bicep have just eased some new material out into the world.
‘Water’ emerges from the same creative period as ‘Isles’, but feels like it exists on its own terms. Twinkling electronics with subtle melancholic overtones, the track is bolstered by a terrific vocal from Clara La San.
Intriguingly, Bicep also cite vintage computer game soundtracks – think the SEGA Megadrive – as a key influence on the track. The duo explain…
“There was no outright idea when we started, but the original “Waterfall” was born out of experimentation with an instrument called the MEGAfm. It’s a new synth but has chips inside which formed the sounds of the SEGA Megadrive/Genesis games consoles. Weirdly it got more computer game sounding when we developed it into ‘Water’, speeding up and slowing down the lead line and LFOs to give that classic low-bit sound effect.”
“We always like to be fluid with ideas and never stick to one direction, when we play live we develop tracks and constantly tweak and change elements and like to employ that process in the studio too. We work with Clara a lot and even from the early ‘Waterfall’ demos we had vocal sounding pads in there which we had in mind for her to sing along with. Both ‘Water’ and ‘Waterfall’ have the same spine, but have two totally different directions in terms of how they finished up. It’s a common thing in the studio to start on one demo and go in different directions but end up liking both and not knowing which to choose.”
“We like both directions and think some people will like one over the other. When we ran the blog from time to time we would find original demos of famous songs released in the past and ended up preferring those. Sometimes the rawness in the original idea is nice to hear and can end up being appreciated in a totally different way.”
Tune in now.
Go deep on Bicep’s studio methods in this archive interview.
