Andy Ferguson of Bicep’s listening diary: ‘I tend to let the algorithm start me off down a little wormhole’

7 October

9am Friday morning is usually the time I’m most peak-energy because I’m either looking forward to the weekend or we’ve got a big weekend of gigs ahead. If I get to the studio a bit before Matt [McBriar], I have a quick dig around on Spotify or Bandcamp to check the latest releases and see what I’m feeling this week. In recent years, it’s become the easiest way to look for music, especially since three of my local record stores have closed down. I tend to let the algorithm start me off and go down a little wormhole. Today, the first track I saw that piqued my interest was Ant City (µ-Ziq remix) by Kuedo. Kuedo’s album Severant on Planet Mu back in 2011 is up there with one of my all-time favourites so seeing a remix pop up by none other than label head Mike Paradinas was never going to disappoint. The remix remains true to the vibe of the original track but adds his signature glitch/break madness in perfect amounts.

Another big standout today was Red Sky by Pearson Sound on Hessle Audio. I really love this new one. Matt and I have spent the bulk of the past two years playing live instead of DJing, but this is the kind of tune that would be huge in any club it is played in. A similarly clubby tip is James Shinra, who has previously released on our label FeelMyBicep Records. His new EP and the title track Miluv is another massive one from him.

12pm In the afternoon, I spend a couple of hours at the gym, which is usually the place where I can listen to music without getting distracted. Generally, I will listen to a full album or a mix; recently the default has been the Ilian Tape podcast series, which focuses on the more heavy and broken-leaning sounds. Since we played alongside the Zenker Brothers in Munich about 10 years ago, Ilian Tape has always been on our radar. The podcast series launched six or seven years ago and I’ve always listened to it, I like that it’s always got a kind of UK influence. When I go to the gym, it’s quite hard to select a mix from any other podcast series because they jump around a bit too much. With this one, I know it’s always above 140 and broken, which keeps me interested. This week with Otik was the perfect high energy hour.

7pm In the car en route to the Barbican to see Autechre perform, it starts to rain and we listen to a few of their tracks, like F7, to get ourselves in the mood. The performance was not quite like anything I have ever experienced. It really blurred the ideas of how music is arranged and consumed by taking highly industrial, acousmatic and other worldly sounds and presenting them in the Barbican’s quasi-natural environment of wood panelling. They played totally in the dark and I’d never experienced that pitch blackness in a show before. The absence of phones was rare, everyone was in the zone and listening intently, not really thinking about anything else. For that kind of music, you really need to be concentrating – if you aren’t, you can get a bit lost, it’s so intense.

I particularly liked the last section where the tempo broke down and some scratch loops were fed into the music and manipulated live. By this point in the set, it almost felt weird recognising a familiar sound.

8 October

10am Saturday morning has become a ritual for me and my wife since the start of lockdown. Every week, we will listen to Huey Morgan’s show on BBC 6 Music; even if I’m away on tour we will both try to sync it up at some stage of the day. When you don’t have any sense of a routine, it’s nice to look at one point in the week and feel a sense of familiarity. Huey’s show has been great for introducing me to more hip-hop and Latin American music, something I really know little about. Especially since the pandemic, 6 Music has been a really good way to discover new stuff. I find that the presenters there do really dig; they put you down alleyways that you don’t really go down yourself. This week we had a great one, the kind of music I would never go in search of but really appreciate: Guateque Campesino by Guillermo Portabales. It feels quintessentially South American.

Another gem was finding Classical Music by Billy Woods. I loved tons of songs within the mix Huey did that morning, but these were two I didn’t really know. I ended up listening to Woods’ album in full after the show.

6pm When I got home after lunch on Saturday I wanted to finish off the Adam Curtis series, I Cant Get You Out of My Head, which I’ve been re-watching while on tour. Over the years I have found lots of artists via his films, like This Mortal Coil. I love the album Blood, it has so many amazing tunes on it. For me, The Lacemaker is definitely one of the weirdest, like Burial meets Barry Lyndon. Curtis’s work has also re-contextualised sounds and artists I was familiar with in a deeper way, like Tupac. It won’t be one of the quintessential Tupac songs he includes, it’ll be way more dark. He takes these gritty sounds and transforms them into something quite epic and beautiful. When he presents it in this way, it just makes way more sense.

Alex G’s Brick is another one. It’s an amazing song that I’ve not heard in years; edited with the footage of dictators in Russia, Iran and America, it is really powerful. It was kind of perfect because it was so intense, but unexpected. It exemplified the chaos that had been caused in that episode.

9 October

1pm After seeing the artist Barker tweet this recommendation, I saved Alexander Wallin’s Hyperambient for when I would get the chance to listen to it as a whole. I ended up having it on repeat. I get the same pleasure from this as I do from Barker’s music – it’s the right balance of complex and intense, but at the same time I find it very relaxing. The last time I was skiing, Barker’s album Utiliy was my soundtrack through the mountains. Hyperambient will soundtrack this winter for me.

5pm Cooking dinner, I couldn’t think of what to listen to. Sunday’s the worst day for me, music-wise. I really struggle. I’m all done out and my mind’s more like: what’s on TV? I stuck on Kelman Duran’s album 1804 Kids from a few years ago, which I’d saved in my YouTube playlist. The next track up via the algorithm was the dub of Corpor Sujeito, which is beautifully deep and melancholy but with a positive tinge.