Isles (studio album) by Bicep

"Isles" is pleasant to zone out to. The tracks are spacey and filled with gentle grooves. There is a decent exploration of texture with the compression often changing throughout the track. It is consistent and warm but fairly one note. A more ambitious track or a sound change could have brought out greater flavor.

From Boltzmann 02/27/2021 09:42

Electronic music by the books.

After listening to Atlas, I was worried this would follow the trend I have noticed in many electronic music albums, where they fool you by putting the only commendable track as the opener and the rest is a disappointment. This wasn't the case here. Atlas remains in my opinion the best track, but there is much more to discover here. It avoids my main issue with this kind of music which is repetitiveness, there is enough progression to keep your interest throughout. A particularly ear-catching aspect of the album was the vocal samples, they added so much character to the overall sound and gave it an identity.

Fairly average EDM. Nothing special

From Mercury 01/22/2021 17:29

90 to 100/100 (Consistently gorgeous Future Garage/Ambient Techno album with lots of twists and turns and a consistent melodic and rhythmic beauty that I loved.)

For me, anyway, this album is a revelation. I love almost every minute of it. The genres of this album are many per the music resources I use. And I can hear the variety, but also there is a nice flow and consistent vibe of the album. Even when the sound gets more rhythmic and less ambient (such as on the sublime "Sundial") there is something stitching it together with the mood of the mellower songs that make the shift less whiplash-inducing.

In terms of tracks that really stand out to me as some of my fave songs this year, the opener "Atlas" is brilliant. Before this album came out and when only a few tracks were available for me to listen to, I listened to this opener many times. The gorgeous, intimate melody and the way the whole thing builds and shifts mercurially, as well the mood the song put me into as it progressed, made me just fall head over heels for this song. And this made this full length album one of the most anticipated for me in the early part of this year. In context of the whole album "Atlas" works just as well as it does as a standalone.

Really, the first half of this album is head to toe great! "Cazenove", "Saku" and especially "Apricots" (personally love the recurring vocal part here and the way the song builds. The vocals may rub some the wrong way, but I don't know, I honestly love it.)

The second half is a little more chiseled and less atmospheric I suppose. The album's second half is also dominated by a couple absilutely amazing songs - "X" is so cool I can't even convey. Its just awesome! And "Fir" is a standout, as is the previously mentioned "Sundial."

Anyway, I'm rambling. I'm not super familiar or really at all familiar with Future Garage, or UK Bass, nor have I spent a lot of time delving into the earlier works by Bicep, so coming to this album with no previous exposure and just experiencing it as newbie over and over and over, I can say I think this is one of the best albums I've heard this year and it is consistently quite great. Even tracks that don't really amaze me (such as "Lido") are at least pretty and keep the album moving along a very intimate line.