SPECTRUM: Interview with Babii

Babii (ex Us Baby Bear Bones) is one girl, using every limb available to make ethereal yet tough electronic music. 

Despite the serious tone of the lyrics, Babii still has an essence of playfulness when it comes to the sounds and textures that decorate her songs.

When did you start writing music?
When I was a smaller person, I started playing all the instruments my dad had around in our massive mill in Yorkshire which was full of antiques and weird stuff, and that continued for a while until I got a bit bigger and all I wanted to do was make stuff. When me and my BFF used to hang out its pretty much all we would do, and we didn’t stop making music together until about 3 years ago when we finally became powerful enough to do our own thing.

What track are you most proud of? 
It's usually the most recent thing I have been working on, so right now its a song called Seizure and I kinda hated it until my friend Seamus kicked me up the butt to make it into something, and now I love it! And no you can’t hear it, it's only on a secret part of the internet right now, but I am going to set it free soon.

I am still proud of a very old song from when I was in Us Baby Bear Bones. It's called You. My lil sis loved it so much back in the day, that she got her little singing group to learn it and perform it and it was totally inappropriate. Just some small people singing “open my heart and fill it with dirt cause the filth from this forest is better that you” and "open my womb and fill it with birth cause I can make life better than you”.

How would you describe your music?
Have you ever had a blissful, floaty, pastel coloured dream where you wanna punch someone in the face so hard all there teeth explode? It's kinda like that.

What are the main influences on your sound? 
My number one main influence is the Pocahontas soundtrack, no jokes!

I also pretty much always listen to Jojo before writing any toplines, because I think she is the best at it. And there are also lots that are not music. I am really bad for ear wigging on peoples conversations, and sometimes people come out with the most poetic stuff and taken out of context it becomes a little beautiful fragment that will be the seed for a whole song. I have 1000’s of lines written down of things that people have said, stupid things that I have said. I even have sneakily written stuff down when my friends are just talking to me, sometimes I draw out the cadences of how people talk too and see if I can make it into a melody… basically I am plagiarising all the people around me, without them knowing. Sorry not sorry.

Have you released any albums yet? Are you signed to a label?
As Babii I haven’t released anything yet, I just have a bunch of lofi clips of stuff I have been working on, which are scattered all over my Instagram, but soon I am gonna be putting out a song a month and which will appear and disappear off the internet, along with a bunch of other fun stuff.

What are you listening to at the moment?  What are your plans for the near-future?
This year so far, I have broken my leg, broke up with my boyfriend, got a cold for the first time in 2 years, and I am living with my parents again. So I am just trying not to die, 2018 is trying to kill me, and all my favourite people. Nah not really, its actually the bestest and weirdest year ever, and I am really excited about all the things that can’t talk about.

What does it mean to you to perform at Brighton Dome?
I am gonna feel so small iin a biig biig wayFor more information on the SPECTRUM Record Store Day festival and to see the full line up, see our event page.