12 TUNES OF CHRISTMAS: Incredible Intros. #8: Laurent Garnier – Sound of the Big Babou [2000]

Our festive countdown of the greatest dance music intros of all time continues with a seminal track from Monsieur Garnier’s magnum opus.
While early to mid 90s efforts such as Crispy Bacon, Flashback and Acid Eiffel helped establish longtime DJ Laurent Garnier as a producer, he would really hit his stride with Unreasonable Behaviour, released on F Communications in February 2000.
Perhaps inspired by the apprehension that a new millennium brings, the second track on the album’s B side will go down in history as boasting one of the most terrifying buzz saw synths in music history.
Sound of the Big Babou was reportedly inspired by a radio show Garnier co-hosted, as he told Hypnotik in 2016, “The Sound of Big Babou’… basically when I used to do a show on Radio Nova, the guy producing the show, David, who is the guy I wrote my book with, he used to come in on the microphone to present the track and spoke to me on the headphones. Every time he used to hand me the microphone saying “go on Big Babou, go on”, and the track’s sound is quite huge and quite nasty, so I just called it ‘The Sound of Big Babou’, because I am Babou.”
But for the listener, I see the track as a reminder that while we cannot see them, ghostly apparitions are all around us, and some of them, from time to time, can get pissed off…
12 TUNES OF CHRISTMAS: The Story So Far
#12: Royal House – Can You Party
#11: LFO – Freak
#10: Maurice – This Is Acid (K & T Mix)
#9: T99 – Anasthasia
#8: Laurent Garnier – Sound of the Big Babou
#7: ???
[Kudos to Weishavpt for the YouTube upload]