I think its a universal experience to think you’d listened to an album all the way through, only to discover you had missed one or two tracks. Lo and behold, those two tracks end up being even better than all the others every single time, without fail. Well imagine my surprise being 90% done with an article on BABii’s song Backrooms at 8:55pm, looking for other examples of her wonderfully artful and metaphor packed writing to reference, only to find Theft Act 1968.

Since you’re reading this, you can probably guess what happened next (I scrapped the other article knowing this one would be better purely on account of my in the moment hype). Theft Act 1968 makes me feel like I’m being hunted by something just outside of my vision, but like in a cool and fun kind of way. With production from Warpstr and Iglooghost, the soundscape is full but simple with basic synth pads, sine wave arps and simple synth bass. For reasons I can’t quite pin it’s a sound that feels right out of a PS1 stealth game, but with deep thick bass lines instead of low bitrate strings. Pairing this with BABii’s signature airy vocals creates this floaty but intentional atmosphere that’s like a ghost in the night who’s definitely on a mission to do something. It’s a feeling that’s 100% reinforced by the lyrical content, with lyrics about shadows in your door and creatures hiding behind the streetlights.

It’s almost like a concept piece in its dedication to storytelling and I love it. Like I mentioned at the top, I found this song as a direct result of wanting to find examples of BABii’s unique writing approach and how she sculpts vivid imagery without needing to be blunt and direct. As it turns out I also missed Vyper Pro, which in a similar concept style is music for (from?) cyberspace about stealing all your shit. The entirety of the album DareDeviil2000 showcases conceptual writing on both a large and small scale, from whole themed tracks to unique ways to convey a simple line. Very few writers can master this style of writing on this level, and as such it’s something I really wanted to emphasize and appreciate, because when done well it’s something you generally don’t take note of, but it deserves note.

BABii is an artist I was loosely aware of long before properly delving into her catalog, between her gracing the pure cinema that was Iglooghost’s Lei Line Eon (or more recently her appearance as “Cyst” on Tidal Memory Exo) and her vocal samples throughout my Splice library. It genuinely wasn’t until hearing J0YR1D3 in an iPhone commercial of all things and immediately recognizing her voice that I finally delved into her catalog in full, and to not be overly dramatic I will simply say, that iPhone commercial I only saw one time on youtube is singlehandedly the most important piece of media Apple ever created. Probably. Ok maybe not. But we love BABii here, and I cannot recommend the entirety of DareDeviil2000 enough.