‘Seeing climate change like this, it changes you’: dance duo Bicep on making an album in Greenland

Collaborating with Indigenous artists and sampling melting glaciers, the Northern Irish artists are championing Arctic culture – and documenting a collapsing world

Russell glacier, at the edge of Greenland’s vast ice sheet, sounds as if it’s crying: moans emanate from deep within the slowly but inexorably melting ice. Andy Ferguson, one half of dance duo Bicep, walks around in its towering shadow recording these eerie sounds. “Everyone comes back changed,” he says of Greenland. “Seeing first-hand climate change happening like this.”

It’s April 2023 and, in the wake of Bicep’s second album Isles cementing them as one of the leading electronic acts globally, Ferguson has travelled to Greenland as part of a project to collaborate with Indigenous musicians and bring the momentous struggle of this region – and even the planet – into focus.