Foto-© Liv Hamilton
Wenn du wüsstest, wie und wann du sterben wirst, wie würde das deine Entscheidung beeinflussen, wie du leben möchtest? Mit seinem neuen Studioalbum Croak Dream untersucht der in Südlondon geborene und in Atlanta lebende Künstler Puma Blue – alias Jacob Allen – diese philosophische Frage.
Auf der Suche nach einer anderen Ausdrucksform, nach den Aufnahmen in voller Bandbsetzung von Holy Waters in 2023, konzentrierte er seine Energie auf die Songs, die auf dem letztjährigen Album antichamber sowie dem Begleitalbum extchamber zu finden sind, die ein vollständiges Eintauchen in akustische Texturen und eindringliche, ätherische Vocals darstellen. Die rohe, unbearbeitete Songwriting-Art regte einen kontinuierlichen kreativen Bewusstseinsstrom an, der in Croak Dream, seinem zweiten Album innerhalb von zwölf Monaten, gipfelt. Das Ergebnis ist ein Album, das klanglich die tiefen, schillernden Töne des Trip-Hop, die viszerale Angst von Radiohead, Dub-Techno, Jungle und Allens charakteristischen Gesang vereint. In einem Moment intim, im nächsten plötzlich daraus ausbrechend. Wir sprachen mit Puma Blue über Zoom – unser Interview!
I have read that your album inspiration is a bit about death?
It’s sort of about if you could know how or when you were going to die — what you would do with that information. So it’s actually not so much about death as it’s about life. It’s about you know seizing the moment and being less cautious.
Where did that inspiration come from? It’s quite unique to write about such a topic.
Well, I went through an experience just over a year ago that sort of forced me to reevaluate a lot of things. Once I was kind of on the path — I suppose living healthier and engaging more with my spiritual side — lots of doors felt like they opened up to me that had been closed before. One of them was that I got a new sort of lease on life. I felt a little more re-founded in terms of maybe having low self-esteem for a long time. So I decided to express that in the music — to have more fun and stop being so scared of what people might think or whether this music was me or not. I just wanted to get out of the shyness, get out of my head, throw everything at the wall and just enjoy the process and be really free with it.
Yeah, I like that. I think I’ve also had that thought before—that basically, if you realize how short life can be, you’re not scared anymore of things because you realize you really don’t have time to overthink.
Absolutely. I think this was a good metaphor, because it wasn’t necessarily about life being short for me so much as it being about the same deal — life is long, but if you’re asleep at the wheel then you’re missing out and you may as well just die. So I felt like it was time to start living.
But do you think humans are meant to live with that kind of knowledge or does not knowing protect something essential?
Good question! I’m trying to think of times when not knowing would be good for you. I don’t know — at least from where I’m sitting, it feels like it’s a good thing to always be aware of because if you can hold even the most mundane moments as really precious, then I think at least for me I’m more fulfilled by everyday life and I’m not chasing the carrot. I’m not chasing some dreams. I think it’s important to still have dreams, ambitions and goals, but there’s a lot of simple beauty we miss when we’re not taking stock of how beautiful everything is all the time.
Were there movies or books or anything else that inspired you additionally to write this record?
I’ve been reading and watching a lot. Like I heard Erykah Badu say once that there’s a time to “upload” but a time to “download.” What I tend to do is read and watch a lot of movies and books before the album begins and then once I’m in the album-writing world, it’s like all I think about is music — it feels like there’s not much time for anything else. So right now, since the album is finished, I’ve been reading a lot again. But I feel like these books weren’t in my consciousness while I was making the album.
You know I love Ron Padgett, Charles Bukowski, Sylvia Plath and Frank O’Hara. So I guess I was reading a lot of poetry, which kind of inspires me in terms of lyric structures and stuff.
It’s the first time anyone has asked me about movies and I can’t really think of any that inspired the album. I think I was thinking more sonically. But something that indirectly influenced the album was Trainspotting — more because of the soundtrack and the world that soundtrack created. I was sort of drawn to movies like that, and La Haine if you know it. But it was less about the subject matter and more about the sort of culture or something.
What did you learn during the record process?
I guess one thing I learned was some technical stuff. I got a little better at mixing. I don’t mix my albums as the final product — which is always great because someone much better than me can come in and make it sound a little more polished at the end. But I felt like my demos were sounding better from the very beginning of the process — it was like less lo-fi unless it was intentionally lo-fi, which was new for me. Usually, my albums just sound lo-fi because I don’t know any better and I lean into that that’s fine. But this time, I was trying to make something raw and kind of dirty but also polished and high-quality.
It was fun to try to record things really well, but also maybe what we were recording was deliberately messed up — like playing a radio through an amp and having that distorted sound, then recording that with a really beautiful microphone so you get the real sound of it in the room. We were getting a lot of the sounds on the way in, which was really fun. I usually spend a lot of time messing around in post-production, but with this album, a lot of it was recorded to tape, so we just kind of got the sound on the day. When I worked on it on the laptop, I had to do less fiddling around with the details. It was cool and I really enjoyed doing it that way.
Do genres feel relevant to you or do they become limiting once the emotional intent takes priority?
I think it’s fun to reference genres. It’s like pulling out a color swatch and saying to your color team “We want to get it really close to this rose blush color.” It’s helpful to have those neatly labeled references. Sometimes we’d say we wanted it to sound like new UK garage or like modal jazz or trip hop rave or something and it’s helpful to have those landmarks on a map to point to.
But once the emotional intent takes its grip, I find genre is actually unhelpful. It’s better to see music as an entity that’s evolving and wants to be what it wants to be. You can’t really force it into a box. Whenever I’ve tried to make music that’s too genre-focused, it either feels insincere or it gets away from me and just becomes kind of pastiche.
You have to be embarrassingly honest about what you really sound like because if I was just making trip hop, I’m sure it would be cooler than what I actually want to make, which is little tinges of things in it from my home and my DNA. Some of that you wouldn’t maybe flaunt, but for example, I grew up listening to Maroon 5’s first album and that had a huge impact on me. When I make honest music it’s like I can’t lie.
It’s important to let go of your ego and let those things happen naturally because that’s not what other people hear. I don’t think other people listen and say, “All this sounds like early Maroon 5,” but it ends up sounding more like me and that’s important because all I have is my honest expression. Otherwise, I’d just end up sounding like somebody else.
What is your favorite song on the album?
It’s like choosing between your friends! Wow. I mean I love the title track because it embodies everything we’ve been speaking about — it’s chaotic and honest, like more honest than I’ve ever been with lyrics before, but it was also really fun to make. It’s kind of a dark song, but it was so fun to create from the beginning demo idea all the way to the finished version, figuring out how to make each section explode into something new.
But I also really love Heaven Above, Hell Below. It was really cathartic for me to write a song about choosing to live. I really love the chopped-up piano because we just let Harvey, who plays keys in the band, improvise over the song. And then Sam, who was engineering, was pressing stop and start with the tape eraser and just capturing fragments on the tape loop. So what you hear is a real analog take of Harvey’s piano chopped up in real time — something we couldn’t have done on a computer. Every time I hear that song, I remember how much fun we had in the studio — you know we were all laughing, it was very fun.
After such an intense creative period — what does rest look like for you?
I love to read. I feel like over the last seven years, I really fell away from reading. I have ADHD, so I think I just stopped prioritizing books. And what I think what happens with ADHD is when you don’t prioritize something, you avoid it or it just doesn’t happen. I was keeping up with poetry and stuff but I really just fell away from reading books and what happened was like about a year and a half ago, I think my therapist recommended some books and my partner did too. I started reading them first more as self-care and then I really got back into it. So over the last year, I’ve really enjoyed fiction again for the first time in ages.
But I also love being out in nature. Especially with my partner, if we’re in the woods together, that’s where I’m the most happy.
I also love old video games. I’m not really a gamer — I don’t buy new ones — but I like old ones.
Calling people is really restful for me, I have a friend in Spain I call all the time and he gives me energy. I always feel better after talking with him.
Historically a lot of people have interviewed me about having insomnia, but now I love to sleep. I really value sleep — I think it’s important to sleep.
I love to rest. I think it’s the most important thing we can do for ourselves as human beings — is like not working ourselves to the bone. Even at work, there are ways to prioritize rest.
There’s so much pressure to be present online now, right? Is it still working out for you with the pressure to be active on social media?
I guess there’s a kind of pressure to be more online and to use different social medias all at once – to be like really active and engaging and I think I go up and down on how I feel about it – it’s not that deep. At the end of the day, I’ve got to put bread on the table and so it’s a very easy job to create some content. But then most of the time, I really rebel against it because it feels so unnatural. I don’t like to do things that feel unnatural. It’s cool to do things that feel challenging or out of my comfort zone, but making daily TikTok content feels like the opposite of what I was put here on Earth to do.
So I just don’t engage when the pressure is on me. Usually I just ignore it which is probably not very good for my career, but I don’t care. I’d rather be here living a beautiful life and making less money than waste my life creating content. I mean, I am already doing music and that takes so much time and that’s a great life.
Puma Blue Tour:
14.05.26 München, EVIL / LIVE
19.05.26 Berlin, Gretchen
