An exclusive interview with the era-defining electronic duo BICEP about their new project TAKKUUK.
Having attended the premiere of TAKKUUK, it's hard to not sound over the top when discussing this project. It's a truly moving, goosebump-inducing, clenched-fist in the air flavour of film. It left me awestruck, desolate and inspired. It's a documentary about the people and their cultures on the frontline of both the climate crisis and the rising tide of colonialism across the Arctic region.
The soundtrack is as moving as the film, sounding somewhere between The Knife at their moodiest and like the most glorious glacial electronica at its twinkliest. There are moments when it's pounding like the big euphoric Bicep anthems that we know and love, and other times where the duo really flex their production skills.
TAKKUUK is a film about identity, nature, and defiance, soundtracked by BICEP in collaboration with a range of Indigenous artists. There are Greenlandic rappers, throat singers, and metallers. Collaborators on the record include Katarina Barruk, Andachan, Sebastian Enequist (from Sound of the Damned), Tarrak, Nuija, Niilas, and Silla. The music was recorded in 2024 by Detroit-based producer and musician Matthew Dear in Árni Árnason from The Vaccines studio, during Iceland Airwaves festival in Reykjavík.
There's one particular moment in the film that is embossed in my memory. It's a close-up of a glacier, shot with an infrared camera, where the pale blues become a bloody red. It's incredibly visceral to see the earth as wounded flesh... but with the marshmallow pink hue of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless or The Cure's Three Imaginary Boys. It's beautiful and harrowing.
TAKKUUK was created by visual artist Zak Norman and filmmaker Charlie Miller in partnership with the charity In Place of War, as part of their EarthSonic programme.
It's a moving and transcendent piece of work that feels more activating, than activist. The film/installation will be touring the globe as an audio-visual installation (stay tuned for details) and ahead of the July 25th release of the soundtrack that accompanies TAKKUUK, DiS caught up with Andrew Ferguson and Matthew McBriar aka Bicep to learn more about the project, its purpose, and how they feel about the future.
This interview was conducted over email a few days before the premiere of the film, which was presented across five screens at Outernet in central London.
Sean: Drowned in Sound turns 25 this year, so in the interviews for our podcast and newsletter I'm asking musicians and changemakers to gaze into the future: What do you think/hope/fear the world will be like in 2050? What role might the creative community play in signposting change and a brighter future?
Bicep: By 2050, we would hope there’s going to be more balance in the world, particularly between tech and nature, individualism and community, speed and depth.
In 2025 life feels very flooded with content, algorithms shaping young people’s taste, our attention feels constantly stretched. We do worry if the trajectory continues unchecked, 2050 could feel like a total overload.
As creatives, beyond making art, we also have to highlight and support others. We should be thoughtful about how we use our platforms and our time. Art and creativity has a great way of humanising stories and can maybe help others slow down and feel something real in a world that often moves too fast. Working with people outside the arts - activists, scientists, technologists, but also communities, elders, and other artists - can help us bring important issues to life in new ways.
Firstly, with everything going on in the world, I know there’s a serious message behind this project but it was an absolute joy to get lost in this soundtrack. Did it feel like a similar process making it over the last few years?
That’s great to hear you enjoyed it. The project was incredibly fun to work on but also a very different process for us, we really wanted to support the artists’ original ideas whilst stitching together all these sounds and stories into something cohesive. We’re so happy with how it’s turned out
The title of the project is TAKKUUK (pronounced: "Tuck-kook”), which translates loosely as 'to look closely', why did that feel like the right name?
We let the artists choose a title of the respective track they worked on that represented their sentiment via lyrics or performance. One of the artists, Silla chose this as the title for their track.
As he puts it:
“…it can be taken literally as 'look'' but has the connotation that you're urging someone to look at something closely. The arctic climate, of course, is changing rapidly, so in context of the larger project, it's a "hey look at this, the adverse effects of climate change are obvious", but also "hey look at how cool Inuit culture is"”.
This is a quote from Silla and we all felt it summed up the vision for what we wanted to highlight with the project.
The voices on the soundtrack are so poignant and powerful. Could you tell us a little about some of the singers?
Working with Katarina was incredible for us, she sings in Ume Sámi, a language now spoken fluently by only a handful of people. Hearing her powerful voice in such an endangered tongue was genuinely moving and a reminder of how vital music can be for cultural survival. And Silla - the duo of Charlotte Qamaniq and Cynthia Pitsiulak, who've been performing throat singing (katajjaq) since 2005. Their performances are hypnotic, deeply rooted in Inuit tradition but woven together with electronic, hard‑rock, and post‑industrial textures.
All of the artists have such emotion and conviction in their voices, you can really feel that when you listen to them.
Qamaniq Records Inc.Across the film there are so many challenges that these communities are facing.
What have you learnt from working with Inuit and Sami artists about their cultures and the challenges they face?
Across the film there are so many challenges that these communities are facing. For example, in the film Tarrak speaks very eloquently about how his community were made to feel ashamed of their past and heritage, where traditional acts like throat singing were seen as barbaric. Via his music he is forming a link with the past and introducing this beautiful and unique heritage to a new generation, reclaiming and raising awareness of their shared history in a very human way.
Likewise, Nuija speaks solemnly about how they’ve witnessed climate change unfold before their eyes. They grew up in the vicinity of the Greenland ice sheet, and have seen how the glacier ice has melted and retreated over those years. That has had an impact on their community that depends on the ice for sustenance, and their story is representative of several Indigenous communities in the Arctic region.
Of the key issues facing indigenous communities across the Arctic region, what are some things we, as a global community, can do to address the issues?
The EarthSonic Project has developed a simple six-step action plan that allows all of us to help address the global challenges we face due to climate change. Find out what you can do at earthsonic.org/6-acts
• Switch Banking and Pension Funds
• Switch Energy Supplier
• Sustainable Food Choices
• Travel Wisely
• Inspire Youth to Effect Change
• Less is more
You started out in the early days of making music by creating a sample library from records, did it feel daunting to have an entire land mass and its people as your sample kit?
It was certainly daunting, but we just trusted the process. Every artist was very different and it took us really quite a while to feel like we were doing them justice whilst making it feel coherent as a whole. Originally we had set aside a few weeks for this project and it’s ended up being several years, but we kept working at it until we were happy with it and felt complete.
On a recent episode of the podcast, we spoke to Ludwig Berger who uses a hydrophone microphone to record the sound of melting glaciers. It's amazing how much they sound like synthesisers. What were some of the unexpected sounds of the land that you recorded for the project?
Yes we are massive fans of his work and loved his film ‘Crying Glacier’, a lot of what he said there and tried to capture resonated with us. In Greenland it was a constant mission to capture as much field recordings as possible, which was all captured on ambisonic mics.
Lots of amazing sounds came from the Russell Glacier alone, which was like an orchestra of noise - the squeals and crashes that the ice makes were truly otherworldly and we wanted the sound palette of the project to really reflect this. We focused on the ground level rather than inside the glaciers as we already had recordings from below the surface previously recorded. When we got home, we used these recordings to make drum kits and also resampled them into a synth, which forms a large majority of sounds on the record.
When you first touched down in Greenland back in 2023, what was it like? How did that shift in your minds what the project might become?
In 2023, over the 2 week trip, we got to meet with locals who were so welcoming and very open about talking about what is close to their heart and what is threatening their existence. The very obvious and initial impression of Greenland was of a landscape that was truly beautiful, but visibly under threat from climate change. We got to see a number of artists perform at ‘Arctic Sounds’ Festival in Greenland and from that experience we had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with several. We didn’t quite know what the project would be at that stage and it has evolved organically, over the past 2 and half years, into the installation you see today.
A question I’m asking lots of my guests: If you had $400m (the sum Spotify have reportedly funded Joe Rogan), how would you improve the music industry or the world?
We have been involved in grassroots levels of music projects, such as the Youth Music charity and In Place Of War’s Earth Sonic Project, and have seen first-hand the impact music can make in shifting perceptions, strengthening communities, and tackling inequity.
The biggest challenge many of these amazing charities face is having the funds to achieve their objectives. With that in mind, grassroots music projects in various forms would be an area where we would directly invest the money.
You’re on the cusp of releasing TAKKUUK into the world, what journey do you hope it takes people on either with the music or the backdrop behind it or both?
TAKKUUK was a learning process for us, so we hope it serves as a starting point for anyone that wants to learn more and get involved in the complicated challenges we face from climate change.
Climate change is a human crisis that affects all of us. Whilst we need to see headlines, at the same time we need to understand the impact on a more human level, and how climate change creates a chain reaction that has a real life impact on local communities and culture.
As climate change increasingly impacts Arctic landscape and communities, it will also impact how all of us live, wherever we are in the world. We hope these raw first-hand stories coming from the Indigenous artists and contributors in TAKKUUK, will help to humanise those effects and inspire people to learn more about it.
Sign up for updates about when there will be a screening near you and for more information about the project at bicep.earthsonic.org.
The soundtrack to TAKKUUK is released on July 25th through Earthsonic and Ninja Tune.
Stay tuned to Drowned in Sound for more updates about this project and others like it.