Bicep - "Sundial" from the 2021 album Isles on Ninja Tune.

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London-based electronic duo Bicep dig into their Northern Ireland childhoods on their latest LP Isles, and today's Song of the Day takes us from Ireland to India. Belfast-born producers Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson used a snippet of the song "Jab Andhera Hota Hai" from the 1973 Bollywood film Raja Rani. 

“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.”

“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.”

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