Isles

Six years have passed since Bicep first broke through to a wider world, and the Belfast-born duo have spent them quietly consolidating a reputation as one of dance music’s most dependable suppliers of emotional, arena-ready melancholia. Isles, their long-awaited second album, arrives this week on Ninja Tune—the year’s first big melodic house statement—and finds the pair refining their signature sound into something slicker, bigger and, somehow, more wistful than ever.

Opener Atlas sets the template immediately: a warm, rolling bassline and soaring pads that swell into the kind of breakdown engineered for the main stage, yet there is a bittersweet ache to the melody that stops it ever feeling hollow. Cazenove follows with crisp, swinging drums and a dusky chord sequence, whilst Apricots—the closest the record comes to pop—glides on a gentle four-to-the-floor pulse and a hook that burrows straight into the memory. The production throughout is immaculate: every kick sits deep, every pad drenched in exactly the right amount of reverb.

It is in the collaborations that the album stretches its emotional range. Clara La San’s featherweight vocals elevate Saku into something genuinely affecting, her harmonies floating above a driving bassline before she returns for X, the record’s most urgent and propulsive moment. Cellist Julia Kent lends a gorgeous organic warmth to Rever, her bowed strings wrapping around the duo’s synthetic sheen, whilst machìna’s breathy delivery brings real grace to the closing Hawk.

Elsewhere, Lido is a compact, hazy gem and Sundial deploys its shuffling percussion and dubby low end with typical restraint, the melancholy kept just beneath the surface. Fir builds patiently towards a radiant climax that showcases everything the duo do best—tension, release and melody held in perfect proportion across its five and a half minutes.

Isles may lack the surprise of a debut, but it is a record of quiet confidence. It is polished to a gleam, occasionally to a fault, yet at its heart it remains deeply, movingly human: a big, gleaming record that never loses its ache. More than enough to justify the wait.