There is no stranger day on the calendar than November 1. We’re all wandering in a daze of candy cramps, party bangovers, and gray overcast skies, and the holidays at the tail end of the month feel like an eternity away. The tonic we need to emerge from this haze today comes from young Londoner Puma Blue, who casts a bit of lounge-fed hypnosis in the shape of his seductive and slinky new single “Lust”.
It’s an introspective track that weaves circles around avenues of jazz and R&B, the type of headspace routine spent on subways after leaving a lover whose name you already forgot. “With ‘Lust’, I wanted to write a track that was based around a loop and that ebbed and flowed from a few repeated chords,” says Puma Blue. “I really wanted to write something with that sexy half-time groove like in ‘Didn’t Cha Know’ by Erykah Badu. The lyrics are about getting pulled by your imagination into somewhere that you don’t want to be.”
Puma Blue’s real name is Jacob Allen, and we certainly expect to hear more from him. Particularly after the calm wonder of “Lust” is augmented in a gently bout of color courtesy of its Do Not Entry-directed video. “I wanted to keep paying tribute to one of my favorite filmmakers Wong Kar-wai, as I’ve tried to do in the past, but this time in a different way,” he adds. “The directors were big fans too and came up with some beautiful references to his work for particular shots and developed this idea of me being haunted one final time by someone as I attempt to let them go. We were especially inspired by his films ‘Happy Together’ and ‘2046’.”
Puma Blue’s new EP, Blood Loss, hits on Friday (November 2). Let “Lost” be your gateway drug as you make your way through the day.