Takkuuk Unveiled: Bicep’s Arctic Odyssey Recasts Climate in Sound and Silence

Snow crunched beneath his boots while glacier ice crackled like distant thunder—and Bicep’s Andy Ferguson pressed RECORD.

Seeing climate change like this, it changes you, he later confessed, standing beneath the moaning Russell Glacier—an icy cathedral on the brink of silence.

That sound—ice scraping its last breath—became an instrument. Named Takkuuk, meaning “look closely,” the project thrusts us into Greenland, whispering urgent truths through field recordings, Indigenous throat singers, and Greenlandic rapper Tarrak.

From Observation to Collaboration

Rather than impose, Bicep erased themselves. Samples of glacier fizz and husky chains became drum kits. Demos traveled to artists met at Arctic Sounds, where Tarrak’s defiant rap was “punk” in its fervor, grounding electronica in lived resistance.

The result? Tracks like Taarsitillugu and Dárbbuo in Sámi, do not echo Bicep’s voice—they amplify the Arctic’s heartbeat. Matt McBriar said it best: what emerged “doesn’t sound anything like us—and it doesn’t sound like them.”

Sound, Vision, Urgency

Takkuuk’s pulse is cinematic. Zak Norman’s infrared visuals and Charlie Miller’s intimate vignettes render Inuit landscapes otherworldly—pink, purple, haunting—underscoring cultural erasure along with melting ice.

Premiering July 3 in London’s Outernet, the wraparound installation and July 25 soundtrack write a new creative lexicon—less about spectacle, more about stewardship. As Ruth Daniel of EarthSonic framed it: this is a global story, with everyone having a role.

The glacier’s lament, the languages in flux, the beats formed from melting ice—Takkuuk is less a project than a summons: will you look closely? The Arctic sings—but are we listening?