Bicep Built a Label Instead of Making Another Album

By KAZI Magazine Staff, May 26, 2026

Bicep played Corsica Studios in March as part of the venue's closing series. The promoter called them part of the furniture. That matters because Corsica is where UK club culture still means something tactile, where the Funktion-One stacks sit two feet from your chest and you can hear the difference between a 909 kick and a sample of one. Bicep came up in rooms like this. They built Feel My Bicep as a blog that knew the difference between Detroit second wave and Birmingham techno. They made 'Glue' in 2017, which was DJ Mag Track of the Year because it understood how to build euphoria from a sine wave arp and a Roland Juno pad without once pandering to Spotify's algorithm.

Then they made Isles in 2021, hit number two on the UK album chart, and started headlining 15,000-capacity venues like Drumsheds. That should be the story. Blog kids make good, bring rave to arenas, everyone wins. But somewhere between Isles and now, Bicep stopped making Bicep records and started running CHROMA instead.

CHROMA launched as a label, a visual identity with David Rudnick, and a series of collaborative releases. Ten records in eighteen months. CHROMA 005 with Benjamin Damage under the B.D.B alias. CHROMA 007 with Hammer, their first studio collab since 2015. CHROMA 000 in November 2025 as a compilation of the series, limited to 5,000 copies. All of it sounds considered. None of it sounds necessary. The B.D.B track has the low-end weight you expect from Benjamin Damage, the kind of sub pressure that makes a room contract. The Hammer collab has Belfast in its DNA, that particular strain of UK techno that came out of AVA Festival and Shine. But these are curatorial choices dressed as productions. Bicep are not making music for the floor anymore. They are making music about having good taste about the floor.

The TAKKUUK soundtrack from July 2025 makes this explicit. Ten tracks exploring Indigenous Arctic communities, collaborations with Silla and Katarina Barruk, created for an immersive installation with filmmaker Charlie Miller. It is conceptually ambitious. It has zero relationship to club music. That is fine if you are Brian Eno. It is a problem if your foundational currency was knowing what a 909 hi-hat does at 132 BPM in a room with 400 people.

Matt McBriar had brain surgery in 2024 to remove a tumor on his pituitary gland. He returned to play under the DOVE alias at Fabric for the venue's 25th birthday. That takes courage. That deserves respect. But it does not explain why Bicep, as a project, has spent two years platforming other producers instead of finishing their own material. CHROMA reads like a hedge. Launch a label, build a roster, create an ecosystem where your name carries weight even when you are not making the tracks. Bicep came from a generation that believed the dancefloor was the only honest A&R left. Now they are running their own A&R department and hoping curation substitutes for production.

The Royal Albert Hall show is booked for November 2026. Presumably it will be another AV spectacle, more Terrain studio visuals, more conversation about immersive experience design. But the last time Bicep made a track that belonged in a 200-capacity basement was 2021. They have become very good at making records that sound like they should be important. They have stopped making records that make you move.

The scene does not need another tastemaker label from producers who already made it. It needs Bicep to remember why 'Glue' worked. Juno pad, arp line, build, release. No installation required.