Experimentation isn’t anything new for producer and musician fish narc. From being an integral member of the groundbreaking collective GothBoiClique to producing a slew of EPs in the past two years, fish narc has effectively tackled yet another profoundly new area of music with “Duele” — a dark and brooding song sung solely in Spanish by Spanish vocalistGoa.
It’s the latest addition to fish narc’s ongoing list of producing Spanish-sung songs with various artists. It’s not the first time that fish and Goa have worked on a song together either, with both appearing on Cold Hart’s track “You Are Not Here.”
“Duele” comes off as detached and hateful, emanating the feeling of being stuck while being in a self-destructive and flat-out painful relationship with another person.
“Se que duele quererme, pero mas me duele ser yo.”
Translating to “I know it hurts to love me, but it hurts me more being myself.” There is an evident indication that Goa is unhappy with himself and unhappy in this relationship and therefore detached or unable to love another person. The love they want for themselves is unattainable; the love the other person wants from them is futile. The song commences with dismal chords of slow-paced guitar strumming and then goes straight into the first verse, alongside a classic-melancholic, trap drum pattern.
The music video for “Duele” was directed and edited by visual artist Nick Blanco, who has a long list of prolific and efficacious videos shot with analog VHS tapes. Blanco sticks to these same operative themes for “Duele,” featuring both Goa and fish narc roaming around the streets of NYC and riding the subway aimlessly. There’s a specific moment that sticks out where Goa is sitting on the train looking out the window in a desolate and dreary way, almost as if his brain is being preoccupied with something distressing going on in his life.
With dark colors, grungy-city aesthetic and low energy movements, the message of solitude, somber and sadness comes across almost instantaneously paired alongside with the song, lyrics and production itself. Watch Goa’s pain come to life from the second the video starts at the train station to the moment it ends with Goa meandering New York’s city streets.