In the early 2010s, it seemed like Alejandra Ghersi dropped fully formed from a portal in the sky, with the mission of showing us how to bend, twist, and stretch sounds to the extremes. In truth, she already had a decade of sonic experimentation under her belt; as a teenager in early 2000s Venezuela she cut her teeth on glitchy electronica swerving pop and reggaetón through Mexican netlabels, before “killing the project” and becoming the Arca we know and love: one of the most in-demand producers and most important electronic musicians of our time.
Her 2013 mixtape &&&&& foreshadowed pivotal collaborations with FKA twigs, Björk, and Kelela, its hallucinogenic hip hop mixtures elasticating sludgy R&B vocals and Final Fantasy soundtrack samples, redlining blown out bass, and turning diamond shards of beats inside out. She travelled even further on her debut album Xen, jumping from Hippos In Tanks to Mute to create one of the most visceral sounds of 2014. In between gauzily filtered pianos, dewy hip hop infused with rubbery synths, and cathartic xeno-chamber pop are the dark carnivalesque melodies of the title track, seesawing between molten unfettered ecstasy and blood spilling, hyperventilating club carnage. Absolutely nothing else sounded like it at the time, and there’s still little that does now.
Arca reached some of the highest emotional peaks on her self-titled 2017 album for XL Recordings, returning to the vocal led songs of her youth with a newly naked, uncovered approach. Jesse Kanda’s hypercorporeal artworks have long been in conversation with Arca’s electrolytic sound design, visualising her voice's raw operatics, her wrestling lyrics, and synapse-snapping, surgically slicing beats. It was a vital step in her metamorphosis to pop provocateur, blossoming with the first instalment of the Kick cycle in 2020, a definitive artistic statement and arguably her magnum opus. Featuring Björk, Rosalía, Shygirl, and SOPHIE, kindred spirits whose experimentations in sound and style are reflected in Arca’s twisted-balloon beats, sharp-heeled raps, and whorls of manic energy, KiCk i is a testament to how far Arca has moved the music landscape’s needle.
Through a rich, intertextual discography, Arca has shaped samples and synthesis into forms previously thought impossible, birthing an entire mutant movement in the process.
