Bicep Ended Their 13 Week XOYO Residency With a Confetti-Strewn Victory Lap

Bicep's thirteen week workout at XOYO has been a perfect collision of elements. Two DJs ascending to what is surely the top of their game, one of London's premier nightclubs, and one long, (occasionally) hot summer. Well with the summer bit well and truly behind us, this weekend the time came for Bicep to call time on their extensive Shoreditch season, and naturally we wouldn't have been anywhere else.

Perhaps the reason Bicep's residency has felt so wildly successful is just how effectively they have favoured curating perfect nights over simply pulling in huge names. Whether it was our visit to see Young Marco in August, or Greg Wilson's stellar appearance — the importance has been on names the Belfast boys could work with and build around. It's made the run sustainable, each week intriguing but also familiar. Saturday night, their swan-song, was no different.

Although, of course, it was a little bit different. A little bit special. Upstairs was blessed with the presence of the original cosmic crusader Daniele Baldelli — a man so soaked in balearic tradition he can drop "All Along the Watchtower" to an East London club full of twenty-somethings with not so much as an eyebrow raised in the entire room. It was a rare treat to wallow in the wealth of gooey, Italo-disco and psychedelic wanderers he was blending — not that we knew anywhere beyond 5% of the tracks of course — but ultimately it was tough to stay above surface, knowing full well what was going on downstairs.

It was a bit of a greatest hits set from Bicep, in the best way possible. Safe to say this meant house. Big, solid, chunky, durable, savage, house — again, in the best way possible. Yet as ever, the neat trick both Matt McBriar and Andy Ferguson manage to swing, is in providing such unashamedly full-frontal party tunes, while keeping things interesting, keeping them dynamic. Tracks included in their set like Denis Sulta's "LA Ruffgarden", or their own "Dahlia", are prime examples. Slammers, with enough of an underbelly to keep you hanging on.

If the night, and quite possibly, the Belfast boys' entire year could be summed up in two tracks, it would be their lithe roller "Just", and their unmanageable edit of Dominica's "Gotta Let You Go". Both dropped respectively at two and three in the morning, and ushered in with a gust of dry ice and a shimmering cascade of confetti. It was a true celebration, not just of a massive run in XOYO, but also of the "moment" these two seem to be having. There's a lot to be cynical about when it comes to club culture in the UK at the moment, but the example of two producers and selectors prepared to provide music worth taking seriously, yet in an environment that doesn't ask for the same treatment, is a real and continuing pleasure.

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Bicep will perform at this year's Strawberry Fields, taking place November 20-22. Info and tickets here. They will also perform a New Zealand headline show, taking place at Auckland's Neck Of The Woods on Friday November 20. Tickets here.