- Ultra-polished raptor house on Marie Montexier's label.
- Dj Babatr, or Baba The Raptor, rose to international acclaim as an originator, a progenitor, and a musical grandfather. In the mid '00s, he created raptor house in the barrios of Caracas, Venezuela. Today, this sound has become one of the most influential threads in what is often now referred to as "Latin club." But his work is not just a vital piece of music history. Baba remains an active and fierce musical innovator who, in 2022, landed one of the biggest hits of his career with his collaboration with Nick León, "Xtasis." He's been moving from strength to strength since then. Last year saw him working with artists like Arca and popping up on club and festival bills around the world. His music has become more receptive to outside influences and more polished at the same time, with brighter textures and shinier production values. The Journey, his debut for Marie Montexier's Paryìa label, both charts the evolution of and lays out the future for the genre he helped invent.
Raptor house is what Babatr has described as "the lost child of techno," swung, rippling and musclebound. It has more in common with that genre than other dominant Latin club strains, which makes it ripe for fusion, or at least inversion, bringing other sounds back to Venezuela to be remade in Babatr's image. "In The Jungle," a collaboration with fellow raptor house hero Dj Deep RH, is the most conventional track here, layering bongos over a stiff, jerky drum pattern and blasted with a raucous, dive-bombing bassline every once in a while. "In The Groove" is bottom-heavy and jittery, with a shrill horn line that bleats over everything else, scribbling madly like a streaker running across a football field.
The remaining two tracks feel like they were made in a vastly different context. The title track's clipped vocal and rolling groove is pure raptor house, but the organ bassline and quivering string add a certain tension between anticipation and release, not to mention more space than usual. It's an addictive combination. "XPansion Move" is completely blissed-out, with a bubbly synth riff somewhere between SOPHIE's first single and Stardust's "Music Sounds Better With You," capped off by a giddy rap sample from Catch-22's "Boogie Down (On It)." It's UK festival fare rooted in the galloping beat that Baba pioneered, and is finally getting credit for—call it crossover, but it's still raptor house no matter how it's dressed up. On The Journey, Babatr's influence and talent shines through whatever new style he's trying on.
Tracklist01. The Journey
02. In The Groove
03. XPansion Move
04. In The Jungle feat. Dj Deep RH