MiiRROR

Essex-born producer and vocalist BABii has spent her short career making pop that fights itself: sweet vocal hooks tangled in glitches, four-to-the-floor kicks wrapped in static. Her second album, MiiRROR, arrives on Gloo—the imprint run by her frequent collaborator Iglooghost—and it sharpens that tension into ten tracks of genuinely strange, genuinely melodic IDM-pop.

Opening track DRiiFT sets the tone immediately. A vocal melody that could sit comfortably on a mainstream pop record is chopped into stuttering fragments, drenched in reverb and scattered across brittle drums and swelling pads. It’s the album’s thesis in miniature: the hooks are disarmingly pretty, but they’re always being pulled apart in real time. BRUiiSE leans harder into the club, its kick anchoring a warped bassline and an even more fractured voice, whilst layered harmonies threaten to resolve into something clean before the glitches win out.

The two collaborations are highlights. WASTE, built with Iglooghost, is the most hyper-detailed thing here; the pair trade vocal chops like samples, and the percussion skitters at a rate that makes five minutes feel twice as long, in the best way. HUNTED, made with umru, is more confrontational—distorted stabs and a sub bass that hits hard against BABii’s airy delivery, a collision of hyperpop precision and the record’s restless heart.

The middle section shows off its range. TRACKS is as close as the album comes to a straightforward banger, all driving toms and shouted hooks, whilst TiiME/EMiiT and 4WARDS:BACK play with the mirror-image conceit that gives the record its name, melodies that run forwards and then reverse on themselves. The eight-and-a-half-minute VOiiD is the boldest move: a long, beatless drift through cavernous pads and distant vocal fragments that rewards patience.

Closer MOTHER is the record’s most exposed moment, a sparse arrangement of soft piano-like keys and a vocal delivered almost without effects—proof that beneath all the mangling there’s a songwriter with real melodic gifts. MiiRROR won’t be to everyone’s taste; it’s restless, dense and unapologetically strange. But it’s a confident step forward from an artist steadily carving out her own corner of the UK electronic scene, and a reminder that Gloo remains one of the most reliably adventurous labels around.