Object Permanence Jabu, Daniela Dyson

We did a stream from the Bristol Museum, unfortunately without Daniela. The last time we all performed together was at Cafe Oto in London, for a Young Echo event.

It feels even longer.

I was thinking just before that Cafe Oto happened in a different life!

It’s done. It’s completely different, a whole new time.

These days, you see someone for as long as you can be on a walk with them before you need the loo or it gets too cold and then that’s it.

It’s a nightmare, to be honest. Usually, a few people take the initiative to push things forward, but it’s like herding cats.

Things get passed from hand to hand. Often someone will confirm something but then announce they’re too busy to work on it, so it’s a bit like passing the baton.

It’s a weird answer for me. As a lyricist, when it comes to writing songs, poems, or however I express myself with language, it doesn’t really matter what’s going on. I just need to do it. I’m always writing, come rain or shine.

It must influence your writing whether you are conscious of it or not? It’s got to seep in.

Yes, the subjects matter but not the process of wanting to do it. It’s just me and a notepad and songs—that doesn’t change. It’s a part of my lifestyle that’s like religion is for some people.

That’s interesting. I’m the complete opposite in that I have nothing to write about. Someone was saying to me the other day that they’re revisiting old memories and being nostalgic about that because they’re not creating any new ones. Maybe there’s one poem and it’s like Groundhog Day. And this is weird because there’s not enough collective mourning for all the deaths.

D put on a poetry night at the Brunswick club that really got us inspired.

That’s right, it was about three years ago. I did an interview and a reading inside a mosquito net which was part of the creative statement. It was an all-encompassing night.

Were you wearing your fish costume? Or was that Cafe Oto?

That was Cafe Oto. Do you know the story of the fish with all the multi-colored scales? [Daniela is referring to The Rainbow Fish by Swiss writer Marcus Pfister.] The story goes he gave each of the fish one of his scales so they could all be beautiful together. Which is not what I would do, fuck that!

The first time we actually got D to read was at the Cube Cinema in Bristol. It was the first time we had done a full day-and-night Young Echo event. D read a couple of love-themed poems and I remember being in bits. We had plans to do a love-themed album next, so it felt like the right time for us to get involved.

There were a couple that fucked me up.

There’s one about buying my boyfriend daffodils because they’re really cheap. It’s about reversing the gender roles. There’s another one called “Mantra” which is all about enjoyment: fucking, dancing, and eating. All these shared experiences which we can’t do now—so I try not to think about it anymore.

It was at our place in Bedminster. I remember a funny microphone and book situation.

It was the first time I properly wore studio headphones and heard the sound of my voice back.

I remember being in the kitchen and just thinking it was going really well.

I grew up with my Columbian mum. We listened to bootleg tapes of traditional music like cumbia , salsa, and reggaeton—and loads of Shakira. My dad is a lot older, he was too square for The Beatles even, so I listened to a lot of opera with him. I got into DJing because of a friend who used to run a night called Illegal Data. There was always a slot for someone who wasn’t a DJ. Turns out it was the most fun I’d ever had. I moved to Bristol to attend art school. Anyways, brujería is something I’ve had passed down to me from other family members. It’s magical realism from Columbia that penetrated things so much that it’s a part of family history. My mum got in a fight with a woman once when I was really little because the woman was giving me the evil eye. When we got home, she got an egg and performed a ritual where you pass an egg over your body in the sign of the cross. Then you crack it into water, and it’s meant to take the bad energy away. Part of my performance was a homage to those traditions.

I remember we fed off each other in the first session. You guys told me you had been looking into Greek Myths and different kinds of love, like agape; conversations about presence and absence. Did we talk about object permanence?

What is object permanence? I can’t even remember!

It’s about energy and a certain period of time, a happening being contained within physical objects.

No! It’s a path development that babies can teach you.

I’ve absolutely fucked it then, haven’t I?

You haven’t. It’s understanding that something still exists even though you can’t see it. A baby reacts to peekaboo because you’re not there anymore, so they can’t see you. We also talked a lot about pining—which is really relevant for now. Do we even exist for each other if we’re not physically present anymore?

It made a lot of sense to not do the same thing again. Amos asked me about what my ideas were for the next record and I really wanted everything to be more vibrant: love, passion, sensuality. All of those ideas seem more colorful and full of life.

A massive thing that set it in motion was us starting our monthly Music 4 Lovers show on NTS Radio. We started getting together every month, listening to lots of music that made us happy, getting quite energized off enjoying that together. It made sense that the music we started making was a lot sweeter.

Andy Payback especially would play a lot of lover’s rock on the radio and our friend Miles, who runs Bokeh Versions, introduced me to the music of A.R. Kane on a car journey. It’s also just a time thing, things change as you go along. As Alex said, it doesn’t feel exciting to make the same thing twice.

That Tirzah album was amazing. I know we all like Blood Orange here.

The smaller Tirzah side-projects like Curl I find inspiring, especially when someone is a big deal: People who are doing these massive club shows but still do weird offshoot projects in small venues, playing with the cue buttons on CDJs, doing shonky weird music live, working freely.

It seems like there’s a long tradition of British music that has pop ambitions but is made in a cheap studio. Look at all The Streets or old Lover’s rock stuff , they were trying to make pop but were limited by their environment. They couldn’t make it as shiny as the Luther Vandross or Prince records which were coming out at the time. They have their own qualities because of these limitations.

All the stuff that’s coming out on Cold Light, our friend Dean’s label.

There’s a nexus in Bristol that is very open and free between label to label, night to night, artist to artist. Everyone knows everyone and is willing to share. There’s no sense of exclusivity. The recent crop of Bristol music—Cold Light, Young Echo, or Bokeh Versions—everybody has been doing their thing for a long time privately before doing anything publicly. Bristol people are very disciplined and hard-working.

[Daniela erupts into laughter, apparently feeling caught.] I’m sorry! I’m just not disciplined at all. Maybe I should be…

Everybody thinks: Bristol, Trip-Hop, rah-rah-rah; or Bristol: Full Cycle crew, whatever. I do still feel there’s the perception that people from the wider UK see Bristol as a joke. So maybe that’s part of the reason why people push each other and stay together. Because if we don’t, then I don’t think anyone else is going to do that for us. What does it feel like for you, D, coming to Bristol from the outside?

Totally different. I come from a small town in Norfolk. There isn’t a lot going on there at all. I moved to the complete other side of the country to do creative stuff. To me, I never felt that Bristol was a place people laughed at because I came from a place people really did laugh at. Bristol is like the weirder younger sibling that you can pick on a bit, less happening but easier to make something happen.

In Bristol, you can do a lot of things in one night. Some of the nicest evenings start off in a pub with a group of mates, then you take it elsewhere.

I hated it when I first moved. I remember one New Year’s Eve, I was freezing, I was like: “What is it with you people?! You just want to be in the streets! I’m cold, you don’t even want to walk on the pavement. You walk in the middle of the road all the time.”

Amos and Jasmine, they absolutely fucking love walking around! Let’s just sit down someplace warm.

Sometimes the walk is the best bit!

Since everyone has been doing a lot of walking lately, what are your favorite routes around Bristol, Daniela? Any good places for poetry recitals?

Snuff Mills is nice. Lots of water sounds there. But I promise you, I will never read poetry in the cold.

Are you sure you don’t want to do a little gig from a tree in Ashton Court or something?

I am good, thank you.