Bicep went quiet for three years. On Halloween night, Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson ended that silence at Sydney's Hordern Pavilion, a sold-out room thick with smoke and a crowd that, per Bicep's own touring history, includes fans who follow the duo from show to show. Openers DAWS and DJ PGZ warmed up a venue that had been waiting a long time for this.
The Sydney show is the first stop in a run that also includes two nights at Melbourne's The Underpass on November 1 and 2, and a Royal Albert Hall date in London this November that sold out within minutes off more than 30,000 sign-ups. For a duo that spent the hiatus mostly out of the live circuit, that is not a comeback trickling back in. It is a reintroduction at full scale.
Why does the new material sound so different?
The live return lands just weeks after Bicep broke their studio silence too. On September 25 they released Air / Lemonder / Viper, a three-track EP on Ninja Tune and their first standalone material under their own name since 2021's Isles. Air features vocalist SOARR, and Viper is a full collaboration with Warp producer Clark featuring Saskia on vocals, a shift for a project long associated with wordless, atmospheric house and techno.
McBriar and Ferguson pin the change on a single decision. "This really marks the start of a new chapter for us," they said. "Moving into a new studio, where we built our own vocal booth, has completely transformed how we work. We've finally managed to step up our recording process, allowing us to collaborate live in the room with amazing vocalists like SOARR and Saskia to add a whole new layer to our sound." On working with Clark specifically: "It was a genuine pleasure to collaborate with Clark, one of our all-time favourite producers. He has brought another dimension to the project and really pushed us to the next level while keeping our core energy intact."
What else is coming?
Three weeks after that EP, Bicep announced their third studio album, SLUG, due January 29, 2027 on Ninja Tune. It runs 18 tracks deep with Clark, Eartheater, Lauren Duffus, SOARR, Saskia, George Riley and others across the guest list, a roster that confirms the vocal booth was not a one-off experiment but the engine for the whole record. The announcement came with another three-song pack, Gas, Ultra and Equarium, featuring Lauren Duffus, SOARR, Eartheater and Kehina respectively, which sit alongside Air, Lemonder and Viper on the final tracklist.
"Moving into a new studio, where we built our own vocal booth, has completely transformed how we work."
For a duo that built a global following on instrumental, euphoric club tracks, that is a real bet: whether the audience that packed the Hordern Pavilion on Halloween follows Bicep into a more vocal, more collaborative sound, or whether the old wordless formula was the draw all along.
