The new chapter of ALGO CAMBIÓ…, JENESAISPOP’s podcast with Fundación SGAE, is dedicated to the end of the barriers between mainstream and underground. We are visited by Martin, who from competing in Operación Triunfo has gone on to publish an album called ‘La insolación’, inspired by the novel of the same name by Carmen Laforet, and co-written and produced by Hidrogenesse. We spoke with the artist about the commercial possibilities of this project. Is it mainstream? Is it underground? Was it commercial at all?
Urrutia tells us first about the more than 2 years since he left the Academy. A period without releasing an album that is due to his involvement in the ‘Mariliendre’ series. “As soon as I left, the first thing I received was: ‘The Javis want to see you for this series.’ I did the casting and they hired me and I found myself so immersed that I couldn’t think about going to the studio and making an album. “I couldn’t physically.”
Regarding ‘Sunstroke’, Martin is perfectly aware that it was not a commercial project or a friend of fashionable playlists: «From the beginning. Zero. But there was a confidence in the artistic, I have always been moved by the artistic impulse. And seeing myself working with Hidrogenesse on music… like there was no mistake, even if it wasn’t going to be mainstream or commercial, or even if it didn’t fit into Los 40 playlists, I did see something artistic and that’s what attracted me the most.
Furthermore, although it was Universal (Luis Fernández, CEO, also bassist of Los Punsetes) who suggested he collaborate with Carlos Segarra and Genís Ballesteros, he remembers that he already knew the duo before: “Maybe seeing me in OT I was expected in another area but if they had told me before joining OT that I would make an album with Hidrogenesse, with a sound like that, it would have fit me perfectly and it would have motivated me a lot.” Of course, for the future he already has other ideas: «I want to make a more accessible project. And also investigate. “I want to do another project in which the voice can shine more in the foreground.”
«I want to do another project in which the voice can shine more in the foreground»
Urrutia remembers that he read ‘La insolación’ by Carmen Laforet – a true “coming of age” – in high school, and tells us that he did not want to return to the book during the recording of the album, which he made together with Hidrogenesse, writing after telling them anecdotes about his life. «The book is a support to turn to. More than an album inspired solely by the novel. “It’s a conceptual idea.” However, we draw a lot of parallels between the novel and the album, and we even read Martin some of our favorite passages, about creative freedom or coming of age. “I want to be 20 years old forever,” he says without blinking, regretting to a certain extent that he had to leave university for Operación Triunfo.
When Martin has to go to the 20 Minutos newsroom to conduct another interview, we chat with Rubén Gutiérrez, director of Fundación SGAE, about how the boundaries between mainstream and underground have been blurring over the last 20 and 30 years. Gutiérrez points out that a project like Sound Depression with Bb trickz would have been previously unimaginable, although we found some precedents, such as the collaboration of Los Planetas with Yung Beef. Amaia, who has worked with Marcelo Criminal, Irenegarry or Ralphie Choo, or this same one, who has done it with Rosalía, would be other antecedents, among which we also mention Fangoria/Single, Vega/Bisbal or Torroja/Arto Lindsay.
Rubén believes that in recent years “the categorization of genres has been lost” and affirms that there are festival posters that 15 years ago would have been “unimaginable.” He praises the fact that artists no longer feel that they are competing with each other, but that they help each other with collaborations, and talks about the creation of “woven flows” for example through social networks.
He also believes that the mainstream or the underground “has not so much to do with sales as with an attitude, and with a certain avant-garde element.” And he adds that “the great paradigm of sociology has been broken”: “In ‘The Distinction’ Pierre Bourdieu talks about how there is an element of class that links us to aesthetic tastes: “tell me what you listen to and I will tell you who you are.” But right now, with postmodernity, consumers consume everything. Before, only those who had greater cultural value or more money did it. But 20 years later we no longer look for categories, it’s not that we jump from one category to another. “It’s all much more fluid and unprejudiced.”
