Having some fun and doing things a little differently (at least for me) on this one. 

Afrofunky uses a licensed sample via TrackLib as they were running a competition (which I didn't win). I picked a track from Ghana called Tinitini by Nyame Bekyere and Seaboy to use as my starting point and had a lot of fun with it.

Constant Time features live bass played by my supremely talented niece, wrapped around a bunch of Roland Juno synths.

Mother Lambe is my first foray into hardware synths, with me and my friend Phil messing around with his Moog Mother 32 to create the bassline.

And finally, Korgin, is a full on hardware session, made almost entirely from recordings of Korg synths at the Musical Museum in Brentford - chopped up and layered over a 707 kick drum.

Grab it from Bandcamp

Maximal Tendencies

Back at the start of 2025, Bicep launched a Producer competition through their FeelMyBicep Discord server. They gave us all a set of stems for an unreleased track called Pulsar, and here it what we all made from them.

Join the Bicep Discord community: www.levellr.com/bicep

PULSAR

A disco-flavoured vibe built around the voice of Finnish disco-king Åke Blomqvist and a bunch of drum patterns sampled from 80s Yamaha and Casio keyboards by the good people at AudioKit

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VakjZqso8Ik&list=LLkV2fnXSoolCqPCtA-7M1uQ

Disco As A Foreign Language

Buy on Bandcamp

That thing where you get so carried away adding tracks to a tune that you end up with more than enough for one tune, so you make three versions and then smash them all back together for a 20 minute epic...

Tensed came next once I realised that all of the strings tracks were just too much alongside the synths in Flexed. Swapped out the Bass808 for a double bass, added some long chords and tweaked the hell out of the main riff.

Muscles

Tensed

Fuzzball began life as a tiny little ear worm, courtesy of a certain hairy giant in the middle film of a classic sci-fi trilogy.
It just had a really nice ring to it, so I built a whole track around it - then decided there was too much of the sample itself and removed it from most of the track! But it did inform the melody and remnants of it are in the baselines and sparkly, echoing synths.

It was originally meant to be a drum and bass style track, but at an intimate gig a few months back, standing right next to the speaker stack, I was reminded of the awesome breakbeat that I subsequently stole and littered throughout it, drastically altering the vibe - but for the better I think.

And I can thank the hairy giant's best friend for naming the track for me too...

Genrematic - EP

Fuzzball

After 8 is a kinda cover version of a track a bunch of friends and I made on an old Atari ST nearly 30 (yikes) years ago. We put it all together in one evening, with everyone chipping in a chord here or a break there. At the time, we were really into Trance - Rising High Records, Harthouse, Tribal Gatherings and so on, so that influence was definitely present in the original.

At the end of the evening we all got a copy of it bounced down to a C90 tape and mine was certainly on heavy rotation in my Beetle's tape deck. But times change and eventually I would soon reach the point where I had no hardware that could play it anymore, so I made the effort to rip it into the computer a few years back before it was lost for good.

The tape was very warped and worn out by this point, so the quality was terrible. When I decided to try and recreate it, I was relying on my memories of it, much more than the mp3. The drums in particular were very muffled and sounded a bit 'crushed' so I decided to bring some of that through to the new version, but also adding more variations and fills.

I kept the simple pluck sound and chords pretty much the same, but extended and accentuated them more as the track builds up.
The synth strings are a reinterpretation of some sparkly stuff that I might have imagined as it was buried so deep in the muffled tape recording. And I'll admit that the acid-sounding synth was a total fluke I found whilst flipping through the presets trying to match something from a long ago musical memory.

After 8

The gong being bonged here is actually a fire pit being tapped with a stick by my wonderful wife while we were on a little 'cabin in the woods' retreat with Unyoked over the summer. The click/snare/rimshot sound is taken from a burning log popping and there's also another gong sound in there that is actually the sound of something on a train cooling down that I noticed whilst waiting for it to leave the station a while back.

When preparing the fire pit sample, a harp seemed like the perfect instrument to accompany it and so that became the main melody, with an arpeggiated rhythm underneath it. From there the spacey chords were added, with a cheeky little 303 accent to round out the sound.

And I actually managed to keep the drumming in check this time...

GongBong

Me and Phil playing around with his Moog Mother 32, twiddlin' those knobs to get the acid flowing, backing it up with a Modal D, some Modal 15 chords and (several) Roland 909 patterns, adding flavour with a bunch of vocal snippets, then cranking it up to 11.

Mother Lambe

My second version of Bicep's PULSAR track from the producer competition in the FeelMyBicep Discord server earlier this year.
Amazing to be let loose with the stems and be allowed to run free. For this one I allowed myself to deviate from the stems a lot more after hearing some of the other brilliant version from the discord crew.
So I chopped them up, shifted some pitches, added my own extra basslines and some 303 parts that followed the originals, and of course MORE DRUMS!
I was so pleased with this one and included it my discotechnological mix for the FMB Discord Mixtape series.

https://soundcloud.com/fmb-discord-mixtape/fmb-discord-mixtape-007-discotechnological

The best part or the whole thing was the amazing feedback and advice I got during the process from everyone in the discord - what a wonderful crew.

PULSAR (discotechnological 4x4)

My version of Bicep's PULSAR track from the producer competition in the FeelMyBicep Discord server earlier this year.
Amazing to be let loose with the stems and be allowed to run free. I took them all and did a basic arrangement to get the feel for the elements, then dug out an old drum loop a friend based out on his v-drums and sped it up / chopped it about a bit. The Stephen Hawking sample came later as I wanted something 'spacey' to go with the track name, but his hopeful words seemed to fix much nicer than any of the science narrations I was coming across.

The best part or the whole thing was the amazing feedback and advice I got during the process from everyone in the discord. - what a wonderful crew.

PULSAR (Singer and the Instruments DnB)

Pulsar - Lithops Edit

Entry for the Bicep pulsar remix competition

Enjoy! - ¿?

Pulsar [REMIX]

[FREE DL] PULSAR (BICEP REMIX COMPETITION)

My entry for the TrackLib "Make the Next Iconic Flip" competition.
Samples taken from "Tinitini" by Nyame Bekyere and Seaboy from Ghana, originally released in 1973.
https://www.tracklib.com/music/artists/nyame-bekyere/tinitini

For this competition I really wanted to try for an afrobeat kinda vibe and after searching through the available songs on TrackLib I settled on this amazing tune from Ghana. I was hooked by the drums and especially the fills, but I couldn't believe my luck when they sang "Afrofunky" halfway through it! So that became my hook, along with the rest of the vocal parts. I separated the various parts, chopped them up and rearranged them along the timeline, together with a nice chord that I've repeated throughout the track.

After that I tried not to listen to the original so that I could create my own baseline and melody parts using a 'real' bass guitar together with a couple of clavs and synths with the Roland Juno plug-in. Then I drummed along to it, adding some extra patterns and beefing up the fills before adding a chopped-up bongo topper also from TrackLib.

Afrofunky

This one started out with the beat which was originally built for another track, but it was not needed there in the end. I'd just joined Roland Cloud and was playing around with the Juno plug-in and fell in love with it almost immediately. It was something about the amazing difference in the sounds it can make by just changing the velocity of the notes.

I found the arppegiated synth (Orion's Belts) and the chords (SY Anthrax) then laid down some simple sequences, and sent it as a demo to my niece who is studying Music for her A-Levels and is already an amazing multi-instrumentalist. I asked her to see if she could come up with a funky bassline to go with it, and after a couple of key/scale changes she sure delivered.

I worked on the arrangement and then we recorded a couple of takes with her playing the bass live into the laptop. From there it was just a matter of chopping up the versions and finding all the best bits - no quantising required! I dropped another Juno preset (MegaBass) underneath it in a few places and then spent ages trying to find a lead to do it justice before realising that, of course, the bass was the lead. So I just added in a couple of freestyling melodies following her lead with the Anthrax synth instead.

Constant Time

A visit to the excellent Korg exhibit at the Musical Museum in Brentford gave birth to Korgin. A whole room dedicated to Korg synths, including one built into the wall that was used to teach Japanese school kids how synthesisers work, an all chrome Prologue that looked like it must have belonged to Daft Punk (but probably wasn't) and of course classics like the MS-20.

At one end of the room there were a bunch of hands on demo units including the Volca range, a MicroKorg and a Minilogue. After checking with the curator I plugged in my laptop and had a play around with as many as possible, recording the random outputs of preset pattens and jams, with plenty of knob twiddling on top.

When I got home, I listened back to it all, discarded half of it and chopped the rest up into what became Korgin. Everything in the track comes from that session at the museum apart from the 707 kick.

Korgin

Two hours of mellow deep house summer vibes to soundtrack your sun drenched BBQs, lazy afternoons at the seaside, or Ibiza morning after recovery sessions...

Some new stuff, some old stuff, some classics inspired by Bicep's Chroma in the Park and a retro Darren Emerson set. Featuring a double dose of Dusky, a sprinkling of magic from Tom Middleton and Mark Pritchard and finishing off with a cheeky Roisin reprise.

As the late, great Roy Ayers said, "Everybody loves the sunshine..."

0:00:00 - The Rhythm of Life Commandments - Sammy Davies Jr. as Big Daddy from “Sweet Charity”
0:00:22 - St. Germain - What’s new?
0:04:22 - Maceo Plex - Stay High Baby
0:10:20 - Atjazz & Fred Everything - Back Together (Fred Everything’s Lazy Days Original)
0:15:10 - Barry Can't Swim - Sunsleeper
0:18:02 - Four Tet & Ellie Goulding - In My Dreams
0:22:10 - Simulis - Holding Pattern
0:27:24 - Singer and the Instruments - Afrofunky
0:31:04 - Enmeshed - Rose Valley
0:36:56 - Justin Robertson - Sunshine Whatever
0:41:11 - Ian Pooley - Sundowner
0:46:22 - Bicep & Hammer - Dahlia
0:52:48 - Sasha / Emerson - Scorchio (Full Length Version)
0:57:27 - Gat Decor - Passion (Naked Mix)
1:01:51 - Drum Club - Sound System (Underworld Mix)
1:08:49 - Bassfort - Last Night
1:15:21 - Hot Chip - How Do You Do? (Todd Terje Remix)
1:19:50 - Wamdue Kids - Echos & Instruments
1:26:36 - The Beloved - The Sun Rising (Mark's Deep House Mix)
1:31:46 - amillionsons- Misti Blu (Schmoov! Mix)
1:36:56 - Global Communication - The Way (Secret Ingredients Mix)
1:44:40 - Dusky - Lost In You (Herbert's Lost Dub)
1:51:41 - &Me & Black Coffee - The Rapture, Part III
1:56:34 - Dusky - Skin Deep (Global Communication Remix)
2:01:58 - Jeigo - Pearl Leaf
2:07:09 - Roisin Murphy - Crazy Ants Reprise

This one was kind of a companion piece to my recent mix for the Feel My Bicep Discord Mixtape series - I selected so many great tunes for it and these are some of the ones that didn't really fit with that vibe. Check it out:
https://soundcloud.com/fmb-discord-mixtape/fmb-discord-mixtape-007-discotechnological

summervibes

A bunch of my fave tracks from Bicep's CHROMA shows over the last few years, plus some others that fit the bill, 140bpm all the way.

"Biceptasy" photo by DubsDaly1 and named by Jakewef from the Bicep Discord Community 

00:00:00 - Floating Points - Vocoder (Club mix)
00:05:32 - Special Request - Shellshock
00:09:40 - SWIM & CRUSH3d -  1000 Years Good Luck
00:13:46 - Ineffekt - Long Sleeves
00:17:40 - X CLUB - Desire To Stay  
00:21:05 - Effy - Pitched  
00:23:49 - Clara La San - Let You Go (V$T Speedgarage Flip)  
00:27:29 - Little Simz - Torch (Canary Yellow & Next To Blue Edit)  
00:29:32 - Simian Mobile Disco & Beth Ditto - Cruel Intentions (Joker Remix)  
00:32:44 - Joy Orbison - Flight FM  
00:35:02 - Weval - DOPAMINE (On Acid)  
00:40:23 - Cameo Blush - Head Knocker  
00:43:01 - Bicep - HELIUM  
00:47:22 - Singer and the Instruments - Fuzzball  
00:50:33 - Underworld - Pearl’s Girl  
00:56:17 - Spoon Wizard - Spoonkey  
01:02:00 - Morgan Wright - Yr Lead  
01:04:45 - London Hatred - Charlatan  
01:08:37 - Cotto & jyc. - M1 Massive  
01:11:50 - The Chemical Brothers - Electronic Battle Weapon 7  
01:16:29 - Biosphere - Novelty Waves (Mark Bell Remix)  
01:21:18 - Outputmessage - Glintz  
01:24:37 - Twin Complex - Horizon  
01:29:03 - Dauwd - Could It Be  
01:33:21 - Tarrak & Bicep - Taarsitillugu  
01:37:02 - Leftfield - Storm 3000

bicepesque

programmed, sequenced, bleeped and tweaked by Singer and the Instruments at piStudios on the banks of the River Thames.

Intros, Outros, and the Beats Between

Lost Kontrol

music to listen to, mostly made without any singing and not really with any actual instruments either...

Singer and the Instruments

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