#178
Monday, 6th July 2015
Bicep - Just
Track for the Day is taking a break for the summer, returning in September, but we thought we’d leave you with this awesome recent track 'Just' from Bicep, via Boiler Room...
Bicep play Twitch, Belfast on 17th July and have just started their residency at London’s XOYO
They Say: “There aren't any influences really because ‘Just’ was made up from a few happy accidents and the final result of about ten different incarnations that spanned a few genres. The bleepy riff was originally meant to be much more subtle, filtered and mid-range, but when we accidentally knocked it up a few octaves on our Korg Mono/Poly the new high pitched chirpy top line it created just worked instantly. It's a little idea we're going to try in the future; switching ranges once we're happy with something, maybe taking a top riff we've written and seeing how it sounds as a bassline. The pads were cut from a five minute live jam and were really just part of a big recording where we explored lots of different chords and ideas. For us this is always the best way to do pads - totally live.
We take the music theory side of things seriously and always write out tracks in a particular key, that's the only thing we really "premeditate", or at least the very first thing we tie down when starting a new project or idea. Once we know our key it's really simple to just explore all the inversions and jam over the top of any existing parts. When we listened back and looped a little pad section, it worked perfectly with the top line.
Finally, the vocal was another total accident. It was actually taken from when we were talking to a vocalist, Sophie, we've been working with in between takes for another track. We ended up dropping her whole vocal recording into this track (as they were same key) and a little part of the interlude that had been recorded. The vocal is quite strange in a sense it's spoken word and not something we'd maybe have asked her to do but, after a few listens, that's what works about it. We're both big fans of Anne Clark, Bagarre and similar "spoken word" synth pop so instantly it worked for us. It's amazing how things can come together, and actually in terms of how it came together it is probably one of our favourite tracks we've done. It's given us lots of ideas for the future in terms of approaching things differently.”
We say: “The final track from their now legendary Boiler Room set in Belfast, gets a proper release with Bicep once again in exploratory form, creating house music full of dreaminess and quirk.”
