Breaking with her latest cycle of releases, the Venezuelan producer unleashes all her prowess on an unclassifiable project and signs a grand electro record.
It’s hardly an understatement to say that Arca’s career, for more than a decade, has marked a decisive turning point in the history of electronic music. With the twin releases Xen (2014) and Mutant (2015), the ceremonial Arca (2016) and the pentalogy Kick (five records released between 2021 and 2022, where she explored the possibilities of her style), the aptly named experimental diva has fueled a deconstructed approach to electronic music. By infusing, as if with a distinct inner conscience, a life force into artificial sounds, her organic vision of music has formed a corpus that is as fascinating as it is bewildering.
A relentlessly tireless aesthetic to which she breathed new life on XXXXX, a new long-form work where she abandons the hyper-codified constraints of reggaeton that had sadly circumscribed the stylistic perimeter of her recent efforts.
Arca’s Return to Her Roots
As if there were no point in naming a mutable music that seems perpetually renewed in its vocation, XXXXX flirts with hip-hop, ambient and IDM to form a kind of hypertrophied opera. Throughout, glitchy sound design, deformed synths and gooey basslines intertwine to serve tracks with vigorous songwriting. The meticulous textures of Willow as well as the syncopated rhythms of Futurality (to name only them) create a new liberated gesture that recalls the early days of the musician’s career.
In the manner of &&&&&, @@@@@ and ^^^^^ (respectively a mixtape released in 2013, her long single from 2020 and a mix broadcast on NTS the same year, all utterly canonical in her discography), XXXXX never hems itself in with limits and manages to present a cohesive whole at the same time. One certainty remains: Arca’s music is alive and will outlive us.
XXXXX (XL Recordings/Wagram). Out since July 31.
