Puma Blue – Veil of Melancholy

How many ways can a feeling be expressed? How come we connect to each other? Invisible strings tie us to memories, feelings, and mostly to each other. Curated melodies of love, death, and loneliness, beautifully dark undertones of unfiltered expression… We sneak a peek through the veil of melancholy and gaze at Puma Blue’s hauntingly poetic soul.

Let’s get to know you a little bit. How did it all start and what was the journey of Puma Blue like?

Jacob: : I was heavy into music as a child. So many of my early memories are of hearing music in the car or in the house. I would lay awake at night with my MP3 player. My parents got me a drum lesson as a gift when I was 7 and I became a drummer, I was completely obsessed. I’d play for hours every day. Then slowly I taught myself how to play guitar, around 12 or 13 years old. I would write songs and only knew them from memory for a long time, but then started learning how to record and produce on some super old software around the age of 16.

I played a lot of shows to almost empty rooms. Puma Blue started in 2015 because I didn’t want to be thrown into the bottomless singer/songwriter category, and I was writing stuff that required a live band, so I came up with a name that sounded more like a project than a person and started playing small local shows under that name, eventually putting on my own shows in South London. I had put out a demo under my real name in 2014 that got a little attention, but in 2016 I put ‘Want Me’ out on SoundCloud as Puma Blue, and slowly pieces started to come together.

There is a deep sense of gloom, nostalgia and most importantly relatability in your music. How do you approach these concepts to connect through music?

Jacob: I just express what’s dwelling there, I don’t sit and ponder what I want to write about. It’s all born from experience or deep feelings, both conscious and subconscious. I think there’s an important alchemy that happens with writing music that keeps me coming back. I heard Joni Mitchell talk about how important it is that the audience see themselves in your music and not just you, and so the more I write, the more I try to write openly and decipherably and less in my own secret code.

“I guess my main aim is to bring people into their feelings. Out of their heads and into their bodies and spirits.”

Jacob Allen

Puma Blue stands out to us with its interpretation of textures. What was the process behind discovering those sounds? 

Jacob: Most of it comes from the music I listen to. I love immersive sounds and sounds that don’t sound like instruments necessarily. Early on I was really inspired by dub music, the lo-fi grit of the sound systems and the wonky delays, and that influence is still present now especially in the live set. I’ve always been really inspired by Burial and his way of making music feel photographic and four-dimensional. I’m also inspired by the sound of older recordings, old spy films and jazz records. The imperfect nature of them, the natural distortion and warp from tape, sometimes these elements act as textures of their own. Not everything fits and sometimes it’s just trial and error, finding out what feels authentic to me. I make a lot of music, most of it is never heard by anyone.

The atmosphere in your music is what brings us back every time. How is Jacob reflected in this nocturnal ambience?

Jacob: I was an insomniac for a long time, maybe about 11 years. I would make most of my music between sunset and sunrise. Now I sleep much better, but I am still so charmed by the night, especially where I live – the black expanse of it, the sound of cicadas, owls, rain, lightning… I think music just exists there in that space really comfortably. The noise of life turned down.

You carry lots of emotion in your sound. How do you steer emotion in a musical context?

Jacob: I think music does a lot of the work for you. Sometimes just moving the bass note for one chord in the progression somehow sonically unlocks something – I can’t explain it and I honestly don’t want to know how it works. I just know it’s something bigger than me and I suppose the way I try to steer it is just by engaging with it, being open to it’s power and letting that feeling, that instinct carry decisions. The voice is powerful too, it’s a direct channel from you, you can’t help how you really sound even if you try. It’s in a lot of ways, more honest than any other instrument.

How do you approach songwriting, and what themes do you find yourself gravitating towards most often?

Jacob: I wrote a lot about death on the last album, it was happening all around me, all around everyone in the band too and writing about it just came too naturally to ignore. Love too, which been written about for so long ‘cos there are so many ways to feel it. I realized that often writing about love and about death was the same thing. I’ve written about loneliness a lot. I write songs a different way each time, but I often steal lyrics from my own poems and then change them wherever I need to.

We see a lot of flash photography and grainy vintage effects in your album covers and even as a photo diary released with “Holy Waters”. Do you seek to blend the visual and auditory worlds of Puma Blue or is that about being an archivist?

Jacob: A little of both. I can’t help but consider the visual world of each project. I would consider myself an artist rather than a musician, even if music is most of the form for me. But I love to document too, I get caught up in the presence of gratitude and take a lot of photos on tour or in the studio or whatever. The photo diary that came with Holy Waters was about inviting the listener into the space where the album was recorded, getting a feel for those late studio nights and cold swims. We lived in that album together and I wanted the liner notes to feel like a keepsake.

Your concerts have a deep sense of concentration and tension. How is your relationship with the stage? What kind of experience do you aim to curate?

Jacob: I mostly love playing live. Especially the interaction and chemistry between me and the guys in the band. But it’s so special with an audience, something comes alive in a way that lays dormant even in the most explosive jams we have together in rehearsal or in the studio. I guess my main aim is to bring people into their feelings. Out of their heads and into their bodies and spirits. Shit, maybe even out of their bodies. Just provide a means by which people can cry or sing or rage or feel whatever they need to. I like to think we provide a little stillness too. Dynamics are so precious to me.

What is the main source for you? How do you stay creatively inspired and motivated when facing creative blocks?

Jacob: Nature. Remembering to be-of-help to someone. Sharing food, wine with friends. I think I used to forget to live sometimes because I would work so hard, and just get frustrated by how empty my writing would feel. I had writer’s block bad after the pandemic, but it helped me realize it was because my music is fueled by life, by experience. Another thing is just listening to music. Usually, older music to be honest. There is so, so much there to inspire us.

You draw inspiration from various artists like D’Angelo, John Frusciante, J Dilla and Radiohead. How do you channel those inspirations in your own curated genre?

Jacob: I’ve learnt different philosophies from each artist that has inspired me. With some you mentioned, D’Angelo is a bottomless pit of inspiration, but I suppose his feel more than anything. There’s so much to unpack there that I won’t even try right now. I have listened to Voodoo more than any other album and I hear something new there every single time. Fruscinante has been a huge inspiration with backing vocal arrangements and I largely learnt my feel and approach for the guitar from the way he plays. It’s sort of a raw, bold minimalism. 

How would you define originality and authenticity? Can anybody be completely authentic?

Jacob: That’s a hard question. I see authenticity as a choice. You can choose to be honest, sincere, and therefore authentic. But that might not mean the same thing as original. 

If Puma Blue were a person, how would it dress? How would it perceive the world and express itself?

Jacob: Ha-ha. Well, I feel like Ben Kenobi right now. Puma Blue is a person, ‘he’s me’. But that’s a boring answer I s’pose. If Puma Blue were a person, which for the sake of this question, they are not, then they would of course dress themselves in billowing, aqueous robes of dark, mossy smoke, a rose clasped between teeth.

If there was a headset that could take you back to the exact moment a song was recorded, which song would you listen to first?

Jacob: That is an even harder question than the one earlier. Probably Hugh Masakela’s ‘Stimela (The Coal Train)’ live, from the ‘Hope’ album. But maybe that would be a waste because every time I listen to it, I’m already there.

Interview by Tunga Yankı Tan