It started with opening track ‘Rever’ and lasted through to the whirlwind closing track ‘Apricots’: the crowd at Irish house duo Bicep were grinning all evening – at each other, at the stage or at their raised telephone screens. Here, in the sold-out main hall of Paradiso, Amsterdam, the opportunity was seized to throw off a two-year stiffening. There was wriggling, rocking, people dancing on each other’s shoulders.
On stage meanwhile, the two musicians, in their late thirties Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar, stood stoically with their hands on the keys and knobs. It was a nice arrangement: the two, facing each other, looking at each other over their equipment, dressed in black, against the background of an LED screen. That screen showed the animations that artist Zak Norman aka Black Box Echo designed for the duo. The audience was delighted with everything, all it took was a flickering red cube to appear for cheers. The images attracted more and more attention through color explosions and three-dimensional ‘tunnels’, in conjunction with the rhythm.
With three sold-out concerts in Paradiso, Bicep makes a triumphant return to the concert circuit. Their second album was released last year, Isles, where again the sounds are striking, in songs like ‘Saku’, ‘Atlas’ and ‘Sundial’. Every element in their electronic dance sounds exclusive. A rhythm of sharpened knives flickers in a synthetic mist. A hectic hiccuping pattern emerges, which turns out to consist of twisted female voices. The evocative parts are supported by rhythms that avoid the familiar house style and are still danceable.
On stage, behind their keyboards and electronics, Ferguson and McBriar were busy recreating the music – largely – live. Some songs were given different accents or a different structure. And everything went on, with no breaks in between. The dance didn’t have to stop.
#Audience #dances #shoulders #Bicep