Under the alias of burn, Raul Marti surprises us carrying out a speech marked by feelings on the surface, broken emotions and heartbreaking prose that look straight at references as ambitious and overwhelming as Perfume Genius, James Blake, ANOHNI o Bon Iver. And art-pop Valencian-style, forged with blows, stigmas and irreversible damage with a past flavor that now shape the first eleven songs that this young artist archives on his debut album, “We will avoid all evil” (Raso Estudio, 23).
It is no coincidence that Martí needed to find such an ideal moment of peace, self-consolation and forgiveness as the present to give us his first album, since an exercise in introspection and a descent into hell of such magnitude is a long-distance race for the that you have to be prepared. About what taking this giant step has meant for him and translating his most painful memories into poetry that beats by itself, Raúl himself, Queidem’s alter ego, wanted to chat with us.
Who is Queidem, and when does this avatar appear in your life?
Queidem is born from the shadows of Raúl Martí, which he exploits and manages to magnify. It has always given me a bit of nerve to publish music under my own name, so I suppose that the fact of having created the character of Queidem comes from that need to want to express myself artistically, despite the reservations. The name comes from a Charlie Kaufman movie called “Synecdoche, New York”. Its main protagonist is called Caden Cotard and when I saw it, I inevitably felt completely identified with his fears, with his hypochondria, with his desire to want to do something big but not have the resources to do so… I decided to name myself after him because I thought that, frankly, the worst thing that could happen to me in life would be to end up like that person, but if I already behaved like him, then nothing worse could happen to me.
“I had always wanted to make music, even since I was little, at the conservatory”
Do you remember the moment you realized that there was still a future for you in this?
I had always wanted to make music, even since I was little, at the conservatory, and later, after studying music creation. When I finished my studies I remember that an old teacher got me a concert, and that’s when I began to consider that maybe I liked this and it could even be a possible professional opportunity. At that moment Marcos Gendre entered the equation, who was a great support for me from the beginning and is now my manager. From there I began to develop the type of music I wanted to make and the project I wanted to bear my name, or in this case, that of Queidem, and here we are.
Now that you mention Marcos, another name has also come to mind, specifically that of Tórtel, with whom you have worked both on his personal project and now on your album.
Well, I met him at the race. He was my teacher and now he is a great friend. Being both from Valencia, the thing began with jokes and mutual nonsense until it led to a rather special friendship. I really liked what he did musically and he also liked what I did, and between meeting and meeting in the studio, that collaboration ended up coming out that can be heard on the great album that he has scored and also in the production of “ Niebla”, which is one of the songs on my album that bear his label, along with that of ffflashback.
Speaking of Valencia, you left La Terreta a long time ago, but from your perspective, how have you seen the scene evolve since you left?
I think things have gotten better, frankly. It seems that, little by little, places other than Madrid and Barcelona are beginning to gain relevance on the scene, precisely because they provide that value that other more centralized proposals do not have. We see it precisely in the strength and recognition that folk music is beginning to achieve at the root of many of the current musical projects, thereby gaining the relevance that it had always deserved.
Regarding your album, we must admit that it contains very cryptic lyrics, but even so, a lot of intensity and pain can be sensed in them. What narrative path would you say that “We will avoid all evil” follows?
The songs on this album are born from the purest necessity. It’s not that they follow a previously determined theme or start from a plan that I have explicitly drawn up, but that they arise from those days in which I’ve been very bad and where writing and composing was the only thing that could help me. As central themes of the album, I would say that the listener will be able to find himself, in a more literal way, with death and fear. Aspects that are derived from a past in which, perhaps, I have not felt heard or seen and life began to scare me. A very personal stage in which I began to feel afraid of being alone, of dying, of not feeling loved… And it is from that pain, that anger and that concern that the songs that now shape this album are born.
There is something that is impossible to ignore in Queidem and it is all that religious aesthetic that is intuited in your work.
I have been involved in a religious school all my life, my grandparents were super-believers and they took me to mass since I was little and of course, in the end it comes natural to me to include these elements in my aesthetics. Not long ago I was precisely working in the choir of a church, and I was able to see from the inside that certain topics that I was interested in dealing with in my personal project, such as fear, death, good and evil, were also very present today. to religious community day. This made me reflect a lot, and I think that today many young people and people close to my generation can feel very lost because they no longer know very well what meaning life has, or what they can believe in or why they do what they do. do. Let’s just say that I was surprised to discover how religion, in a way, also encompasses all of these issues. Maybe that’s why it serves as an answer for so many people.
“Today many young people and people close to my generation can feel very lost because they no longer know very well what meaning life has, or what they can believe in or why they do what they do”
Would you say that as a result of this connection between your music and religion, you have managed to see a more plural and diverse face of it than what your generation usually tends to know?
Definitely working in a church changed my perspective on religion. People of my generation are not interested in approaching this type of space, and in a certain way I understand it, I consider myself an agnostic. But what I was able to verify working from within is that there is a very special climate of community that reflects on the most current aspects, such as being alone, not knowing anything about life or thinking about the end of it. Religion bets on trying to make its followers, even without being able to give them all the answers to their questions, feel united and find a reason and a meaning to all this that goes beyond their own self, and that seems very nice to me.
Returning to the main themes of the album, whenever an artist performs such a personal work, I think about how he will feel when he translates his songs live. Does sharing your reflections with strangers make you feel a bit compelled?
At first a lot, now less. Over time I have developed the mentality that this is so, period. I have created this character, this is me and I have to go out there with what I have. After all, sincerity is the most important virtue of an artist and I think that if we were all a little more honest with what we do, life itself would be much easier. At the same time, if the lyrics of “We will avoid all evil” serve to make someone identify with them and they manage to help someone else besides myself, then it’s all good.
With this album, have you managed to close certain wounds?
Completely. It is a path that I have also traveled together with my psychologist, whom I love a lot, and of course it has helped me to realize how art can be a great companion in that hard process that always involves healing certain things.
And now that?
As I was telling you before, even if it’s just out of sheer necessity, I’m going to keep trying to do more things. Apart from the illusion that the fact of having recently released this album causes me, I have learned a lot doing it and my intention is to continue growing, to see how far this project can take me and, of course, to try to improve myself with what is to come.