Hot Press catches up with Dah Jevu

Of the music to come from Ireland in the past year, few tracks had titles like ‘Hawks Of Nepthys’. Not a lot were performed by guys with names like Bobby Basil and I&I Is The Far Eye, either. But then, it’s reasonable to say that there aren’t many acts quite like Dah Jevu.

The Dublin-based duo might not have released much thus far, but there’s already a buzz about Dah Jevu. Tantalising live shows and moreish releases have whetted appetites as to what might come next. Not, mind, that there’s any point in guessing.
“We want everything to come as a surprise,” explains Bobby Basil, one half of the pioneering pair. “We don’t want to be predictable. We want people to ask ‘What on earth are they going to do next?’ One minute we’re one thing, the next it’s changed. I like that.”
That quest for unpredictability is, in part, fuelled by Bobby’s past incarnation as a solo performer – under a different moniker, for what it’s worth.
“I used to release music myself,” he says, “but I hid away for a year. I was, I suppose, your clichéd Dublin rapper. I didn’t have my own sound, and certainly wasn’t close to the full package. I wanted to reconstruct things, with a view to making a career of it.”
After linking up with Far Eye, the pair have worked together as Dah Jevu for about two years, and aim to be – as they say themselves – ‘the glitch in the system’. They weave an engrossing, trippy tapestry which sees everything from hip-hop and heavy rock to orchestral influence and grimey bass mashed into an abstract style that, HP admits, is tricky to summarise.
Bobby laughs with satisfaction. “It is difficult, isn’t it?! We obviously listen to hip-hop, but I&I is all over the place, classical and everything, while I love some Alice in Chains or Nirvana. We have a track called 'Incubus' that’s pretty crazy – the band were just banging it out in rehearsals, and we started spitting over it.”
That live band – Adam Nugent, Dillon Ingram Roach, Keith O’Reilly and Jacob Fry look after matters on bass, guitar, keys and drums respectively – are, Bobby explains, a vital part of Dah Jevu. “It’s about having an all-round sound. Some people will find things confusing for now, and it might take a few years for that defined sound to come.”
It’s unusual to hear an up-and-coming act with such a laidback approach, but it’s inherent to what the duo have planned for the future.
“It’s definitely a long-term project,” smiles Bobby. “I mean, it took us over a year to release a song! But I see it as a do-or-die sort of thing. If we’re going to do it, it’ll be in the way we want to do it. It’s a conscious decision not to flood the place with music. A lot of artists just fire tracks out at the start, and people get sick of it after a while. We want to keep people wondering, keep ‘em wanting more.”
If you want more, it’s in the live setting that you can catch them. Bobby is brimming with confidence when it comes to performing on stage. “You might not like the songs,” he shrugs. “Hell, you might not even like me! I guarantee that if you come to a live performance, you’ll like everything.”
Elsewhere, plans are afoot to release three more tracks by the end of the year, each with a video directed by the man behind the stunning ‘Hawks Of Nepthys’ promo, Hugh Mulhern.
“Each one is going to be different to the last. We’re determined that it’s not just going to be two lads rapping, in a video with three shots. It’s going to be something crazy.”
A suitable word to sum up the weird and wonderful world of Dah Jevu, perhaps?
“We’re all crazy in our own ways.”