2023-10-16 23:12:02
Many people know the Granada artist who calls himself Diego Barronal by another name: Die! Goldstein. This is the name of the artistic, musical and visual project in which he has been involved for almost two decades.
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Die! Goldstein is a clear reference orwelliana. But, for Diego Barronal, after that allusion to the mythical and dystopian book 1984, There is a space from which this man tries to express his concern about the issues that concern him, such as the tremendous inequalities in the world, the drama of immigration in the Mediterranean Sea or climate change. “I make music to think, to raise awareness,” this artist tells elDiario.es in a cafeteria in the multicultural neighborhood of Neukölln, south of Berlin.
He has been living in the German capital for more than a decade. But he admits to having his mind very much set on the Mediterranean Sea. “I have seen how they have environmentally destroyed the Mar Menor in all these years. And I have also gone a lot, for example, to Cabo de Gata, in Almería, where it is very easy to find remains of boats and clothing from the people who traveled there. To people who later explode in the greenhouses… Everything that happens there influences me a lot artistically and personally,” explains a reflective Barronal.
“My work, being audiovisual, also shows with images the consequences of neoliberalism, which now, in the Mediterranean Sea, is bringing, on the one hand, pollution, whether due to plastics, the warming of the seas or the passage of cargo ships; and, on the other, the drama of the deaths of migrants and the denial of maritime rescue by Europe,” he adds.
Barronal makes an amendment to the entire world today. “My work tries to show that the way of life we lead in the West implies inequalities, injustices and pollution for the environment,” she says while thoughtfully stirring a cut coffee. “In my concerts, there is a lot of that, of how the consumerist world in which we live in the West generates inequalities, wars, poverty and migrations to the West and how then here there is a response of rejection of that migration, even mistreatment,” he adds. .
With “the neoliberal system and its consequences on people and the environment” as a leviathan to rebel against, this man with a lively gaze proposes with Die! Goldstein a way to attract the attention of those who stop to listen to him. Theirs is not a music of choruses and easy chords. Some refer to the style of music to which Diego Barronal is dedicated with the label ‘noise’ melodic – or melodic “noise” in English. “When you are interested in human rights or issues like climate change, the truth is that they are not very happy topics, which is why the album has a harsh yet melodic sound load. An idea of making reality seen through sound,” says the artist.
Be that as it may, the music Die! Goldstein demands, literally, listening to waves of atmospheric music, with no escape. He accompanies his performances with videos that he makes himself, with graphic material to which he dedicates himself almost like a goldsmith. Die! Goldstein It is not a product of the industry, it is a product made by hand, in a radically independent and free way by Barronal.
Their songs are long and enveloping compositions designed that seem designed to be heard in cinemas, theaters and rooms where there is the possibility of projecting the evocative videos that accompany music. These days Die! Goldstein presents what is his second album Drowned Paradise, which constitutes a continuation of that first work Dystopia Utopia.
That volume and work of what has come to be called ‘live cinema‘immersive’ has already taken him around the world several times. In this type of shows, music and video are performed live and interact with each other. Barronal has interpreted as Die! Goldstein the disc Dystopia Utopia in a hundred stages in about twenty-five countries.
‘Noise’ with a lyrical singer
With a performance of Dystopia Utopia Barronal opened the international film festival last year Movies that Matter, a competition based in The Hague that focuses on human rights. Most recently, last April, she performed at the Zagreb Environmental Film Festival.
He himself explains why, surely, these forums are more suitable for his music than the typical music festival: “At music festivals, people go to have a good time, they think less or, directly, not to think; which is also fine. But at film festivals there is more critical space for people to reflect on the evolution of the world.”
“I would play anywhere, but what I do fits better in film festivals, because my music is like a movie visually. It is very much a documentary. There is a story, with its development and outcome. This is more enjoyed with a big screen, with the audience seated,” she adds.
Obviously Die! Goldstein says he is open to playing anywhere he can install the machines he needs to play live in addition to the logistics so he can project his images. He is also open to new collaborations, something he notes that in Drowned Paradise The lyrical singer, also from Granada, Laura Lavigny, who can be heard in the song, collaborated Lullaby of the Siren [Canción de cuna de la sirena].
Diego Barronal, who is also dedicated to photography, got behind the camera to record and edit the video for that song, a production that is about to be published on the Internet. Regarding the videos he brings directly to him, he says they are “flexible” when describing his way of working.
“I compose the songs trying to visualize them through sound and then I think about the theme and visual narrative that would accompany the sound composition. And at concerts, I perform original music live through synthesizers, analog pedals and sampler machines with real-time video manipulations juxtaposing found footage from a multitude of sources,” she says.
An artistic genre far from the commercial circuit
The person responsible for Die knows! Goldstein who is outside of the commercial, that their songs are not objects of desire of the current music industry. In fact, it almost seems like a strange miracle that his songs lasting up to twelve minutes have already been played on specialized music radio programs in Spain. The longest composition of Drowned Paradise It lasts a good ten minutes.
“I don’t really care about entering or not entering the commercial circuit, I believe that the artist should focus on transmitting what he feels inside and expressing it in his work, and not only on creating ‘artistic’ products that can be sold or are to the liking of the people. If you like the artistic work, good, but if not, also,” he points out with an ironic laugh, before evoking the reality that he usually encounters.
“There have never been so many facilities for making and listening to music. Consider that there are streaming music platforms where 60,000 songs are uploaded a day. So in the end the music and the work behind it lose value for the listener, since they have access to everything for four dollars,” says Barronal. In this system, he laments that “money will go to those who control the commercial music industry and not to the artists.”
“The competition between bands for a ‘like’ or a follower is brutal and that competition is no longer just local between groups from the same city, it is now global. I think that the artist has to move away from that competitive consumerist industry and focus on his artistic work, whether people like it or not. He would encourage festivals to program proposals with the intention of creating a certain awareness. And do your bit to change this world together,” he concludes.
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