Maverick musical whirlwind from Margate
Who they?
BABii is the alias of Margate-based Daisy Emily Warne,
a free-spirited producer and singer who’s also part of the Gloo collective with Iglooghost and Kai Whiston.
Why BABII?
Warne dropped her first single, ‘PHANTOM’, in 2018, swiftly followed by her 2019 debut album ‘HiiDE’, recorded at Adrian Sherwood’s studio. The album showcased an artist occupying her own frontier electronic pop territory that borrowed readily from trap, R&B and dub.
Over those displaced rhythms floated a distinctive half-sung, half-spoken vocal, freighted with emotional fragility, her songs born from personal strife and upheaval. ‘HiiDE’ hid nothing at all, feeling like the pages of Warne’s journal set to a patchwork of contemporary electronic styles.
Tell us more…
BABii’s music is characterised by a sonic restlessness, hopscotching casually from idea to idea fluidly without losing coherence. This can be explained by her formative years moving from place to place – Canada, Yorkshire, Kent – so it was natural that her music would also have a nomadic quality, with ideas forming on public transport or wherever she could plug her laptop in.
Her new album, ‘MiiRROR’ fuses non-linear rhythms, rapid left turns, soaring moments of electronic symphonics and an outpouring of raw emotion inspired by reconnecting with a mother who was absent for most of her life.
On ‘SHADOW’ we find Warne drifting beatifically over an urgent garage-like sub-bass throwback, while the turbulent motion of ‘TiiME / EMiiT’ hones in on the impermanence and constant upheaval of her early years. The nine-minute ‘VOiiD’ switches from heavyweight 808 beats to dreamy melodic levity.
Nobody puts BABii in the corner…
‘MiiRROR’ is out now on Gloo
