Journey to Mars: Behind the Mixtape
12th February 2025
By Zakiyah Bello
“Abjection…solicits, disturbs, fascinates which does not allow itself to be seduced. Fearful it turns away, sickened it rejects.”(Approaching Abjection, J. Kristeva, 1982)
We sit in the days leading up to the mixtape release, deep brown embroidered fabrics flying wildly from shoot to shoot; an ensemble of 20 somethings rehearse under the soft lights of The Jago in Dalston, flanked on either side by hastily transcribed poetry. When I'd shown up for the soundcheck for the Mars Mixtape listening party and fundraiser, I'd expected the typical chaotic fervour that precedes an event. Instead, the woman of the hour stood quietly centre-stage; adorned in her signature red hue and looking off in deep thought.
“Mars seems isolated” she later said to me. “Mars is also the Roman god of war and the mixtape follows conflict, with the self and with others.” Aries is also the singer’s star sign, something she admitted later to be the missing connective tissue that led her to settle on the mixtape name ‘Mars’. “All of the connections came at me at once and I knew that had to be the name of the project.”
The split sides of me starting a war
Like mars like aries we have all seen this before
- Constellations by Mazvita
The Bible describes “the flesh” as the human ‘other’ that exists in constant conflict with the spirit. Like the Ego and Id, Love and Desire are entangled in tumultuous harmony. Desire belongs to the flesh and it is therefore abject. I feel this when I listen to Obsessive Destructive Nature by Mazvita. Borne of a collection of a raw and unflinching collection of poems, Mazvita’s latest project confronts this metaphysical conflict.
ZB: The title of your song ‘Blood is the only proof I'm sane’ reminds me of abject theory, our fraught relationships with our bodies and what they produce. Blood is very central thematically to abjection, coming from us and repulsing us as emotions do. What did blood symbolise for you in the context of the project?”
M: That song is about attempting to hold on to sanity, and blood to me represents humanity, being alive and existing in reality. Blood is the only proof you’re sane. It heals you and courses through your veins . It’s a good finale to the ep, I went through and felt all of this but I'm here.
When I think of the song now, I am reminded of the medieval humoural theory of the body. The body is composed of fluids that link to each element, any disruption to the flow of these humoral fluids causes illness and death. Blood has always been the centre of our life force and central to our understanding of why we are the way we are.
Blood provides passage for emotions e.g. transportation of hormones and facilitates neural transmission. It's so essential to us, and despite the repulsion we feel, we cannot reject it fully. It is so closely linked to femininity via menstruation and subsequently, it horrifies us. We must contain it, like desire, it must be kept inside.
“There is, in abjection, one of those violent and obscure revolts of being against that which threatens it and which seems to it to come from an outside or an exorbitant inside…next to the tolerable, the thinkable.” (Approaching Abjection, J. Kristeva 1982)
ZS: Where did the name Obsessive destructive nature come from?
M: When writing poetry, words just come to me, it had been written in my notes for a while before I even wrote the poem, I just liked how those words felt and sounded together. Despite the fact that they don’t necessarily go together grammatically.I wish I could describe how I write, it feels like I just black out and then come back to it and feel like, okay this could be a song.
ZB: One thing that has always interested me is how artists describe where art comes from. If it is something that exists in this ether that you reach out to, like being able to speak a lost language only some can translate to bring to the masses. Others believe art is created from nothing
It’s perhaps similar to the literary depictions of chaos as nothingness or everything. Is art pulled out of that sea of chaos or does it start as pitch-black space that needs to be filled. Do you feel like your poetry/music already exists to reach out to or do you feel like you start from nothing.
M: I feel like it’s both, I don't feel like I have an idea that I need to find but at the same time I feel like they come to me. I feel that some ideas will come to me and if i don't write them they float amidst us for someone else to grab. For me art comes from within me. It is nothing and everything at the same time.
ZB: From our previous interview to now, one constant I've noticed with you is how impossible your music is to define, what do you think makes it so difficult and do you think you could label this project?
M: No. it’s not something I think about when I create so it’s difficult to do retroactively. I create first and everything else comes after. I’m inspired by so much around me.
Photo by Monica Mandi
ZB: Can you think of artists that inspired you?
M: For this project : 070 Shake, King Krule, Frank Ocean. I was in a very different place when i wrote these songs so it’s hard to take myself back there mentally.
The listening party was a huge success. The room was packed to the brim with people, dancing freely under the distinct haze that only live music can conjure. I asked Mazvita later about what made her want to split the project this way.
M: I wanted to give people time to really sit with the project and digest, introducing them to the world and the continuous story.