Arca - Mutant

Mutant, Arca
Mute, USA/Venezuela
Rating: 78
by Zé Garcia


Remember the nightbus trend that was first articulated in 2009-2010? It was cinematic twilight: arousing, dejected, and demented. Arca's latest is night bus, militarized. Mutant sounds like a nocturnal, imagined war zone. Nighthumvee. Or maybe even nightdrone. Mutant is not as transgressive to the sonic pallet as Xen, less extroverted than Xen's forays into dembow ("Sisters") or the dissimilar reggaeton of Arca's absolute exemplar,  "Thievery". Mutant does still feel like Arca is creating the most accurate soundtrack for a generation drowning in electronic excess and informational saturation, behaving and maneuvering erratically because of lived trauma, siphoned potential, and dreams deferred.

On "Alive" emergency response units resuscitate a dormant impulse towards capturing the emotions Arca portrays best: vastness and terror, awe and deep wounds. It sounds like a depersonalized aerial assault, flickering lights (or a flickering humanity). From on to off. For all its tragedy, there is a sense of hope in "Alive", one of the finest tracks of 2015. Like brief calms in a storm, "Mutant" pauses, the sonic walls dissolve & ripple, under siege by weaponry, the melancholy of a guitar like yearning gets codified into the fabric of sonic warfare. "Mutant"- the title track- gives "Alive" a run for the album's crowning achievement.

Alejandro Ghersi has a penchant for making the malformed sound erotic. "Vanity" sounds like something grotesque checking itself out in the mirror, feeling itself, unleashing a scathing wrath onto the listener in its self obsession. Album standout "Sinner" walks runways like "Bullet Chained", vogueing down an alley like a techno insect, sirens in the background, under a police state declared state of emergency. "Anger" almost sounds tropical in its first moments, filtered through a nightmare. "Snakes" is enigmatic, a ceremonial showdown in a cave near the sea at sunrise. A superlative version would feature FKA Twigs leading the ceremony, contorting, bizarre, making the serpents bow down. "Else" is the crystalline shattered pieces of "Held Apart" with added harpsichord. "Umbilical" first appeared on Sheep which I first described as sounding like Chancha Via Circuito purging his insides. "Hymn" and "En" are also taken from Sheep. "Hymn" is sonic anxiety, the cry of an elephant in crisis. "En" is luxurious, throttling, and sexy. "Front Load" and "Enveloped" are a return to Arca's shady, wayward hip-hop beats.  The percussive elements of "Enveloped" seem taken from a vignette where artificial intelligence plays table tennis.

"Gratitud" is disconcerting yet inessential at almost 4 minutes. "Faggot" points to an imagined Asia with faint traces of Fatima Al Qadiri's Asiatisch before Arca grabs the luminous machine gun of his sonic arsenal and takes down all the haters. Album closer "Peonies" is also forgettable, nothing close to the epic final moments of  Xen  or Sheep. The excellent "Soichiro" follows in the steps of this "imagined Asia", deploying that legendary elephantine trumpet. Not sure what "Soichiro" means in the context of Soichiro Honda and the fact that Arca is also the acronym for the Automobile Racing Club of America other than Alejandro Ghersi's music does make for some pretty visionary blunt cruises in fast cars.

I've always described Arca as colossal, an epic Arca de Noé of sound. And although Mutant lives in a similar sonic continuum as Xen (our #4 album of 2014) and the luminary Sheep, Arca will have to increase our sonic threshold soon. We have built a tolerance to Alejandro Ghersi's demented soundtracks. We need a stronger dose.

Arca - Xen

Xen, Arca
Mute, Venezuela
Rating: 90
by Zé Garcia

How does one find the words to articulate an album that is more akin to a film score from one of the most mesmerizing and visionary pop artists of our time? Everyone around the world is talking about Arca but lets get one thing straight, around here we first met Arca (aka Alejandro Ghersi) as Nuuro. Did we expect the laptop pop guy who made Reddest Ruby to go on to make the avant-garde Yeezus, the seductive nightmarish r&b of FKA twigs, and now, forthcoming, Bjork? Who will Arca work with next? Missy Elliott?

Xen, Arca’s debut LP, finds Arca at his most repulsive & introspective -it is a malformed triumph for queer electronica. Yes, Ghersi used to love the Spice Girls (I was more into the S Club 7 myself), yes Ghersi is queer, and yes, Ghersi looks great wearing only a jockstrap. But Xen isn’t Channel Orange, so Ghersi’s queerness is merely anecdotal. For this music journalist, it will be very difficult to separate Xen the album from “Xen,” the androgynous post human entity Arca described in his interview with The Fader earlier this year. “Xen” is always in the public limelight, at times grotesque, at times sensuous. Even though Xen is not a woman (or human?) she is more comfortable with female pronouns. Xen is a state of mind for Arca and I am drawn to something he said in the interview, talking about his childhood in Latin America: "I loved the idea I could let myself operate in openness to both science and superstition.” In many ways, this is the essence of Arca: the science of skilled music production and the superstition of allowing sonic spirits to operate through him. Arca is the conduit for the most intriguing & menacing music available right now both for perceived mainstream listeners and music connoisseurs alike. Ghersi is an "Arca de Noé” of sound if you will. Yes, it can be that monumental. 

Xen comes out when Arca smokes some weed and starts trying on different clothing- in similar ways Ghersi admits he used to cross dress as a child when his parents were out of the house. His father also worked as a transnational investment banker and Ghersi seems to have lived a rather privileged yet ominous life- the armed body guards, private music lessons, gated communities- this kid is elite. Is this maybe at what Arca is getting at in “Family Violence”? See Xen (The Album) is like an audio visual tour of the “experience” of being “Xen” - harsh electronic landscapes that take up fragments of pop / hip hop / r&b, unsettling movie scores, and just as easily deconstructs them to reveal the darker corners of the post human / (un)human? psyche. This is Arca’s least hip-hop reliant release to date- indeed it is mostly cinematic suspense throughout its 40 minute duration. What does the habitat of “Xen” look like? Visualize a time capsule (with all the hallucinatory sounds of music, ideas, and varying states of sanity, and epic human drama) being launched into the darkest recesses of unfathomable deep space and you're getting closer to being able to reach "Xen.". 

Arca rarely finishes the uncomfortable states of mind he creates, instead layering electromagnetic waves of bursting sounds into dreadful but always spectacular psychosis. First track is the continuum that Arca operates best in: creaks of light throbbing into consciousness -in the distance alien & avian sound calls- the language of “Xen”? "Now You Know" gives way to the somber piano madness of “Held Apart"- the sort of painful, heavenly pastiche that precedes the album's title track. “Xen" chatters, “ Xen” vogues: deep hollow breathing, grunts - Xen is flexing sensuously, now creepy. The track pulsates into becoming a stripper anthem in the same universe where Laura Palmer does dance routines to “Neverland" by The Knife. The mesmerizing nighttime antics of the title track are found only in two other tracks- “Thievery" and "Bullet Chained”. “Sisters” does sound like reggaeton (good one Pitchfork, but I was already going to DJ this one in between Don Omar and Ivy Queen long before your review came out) and “Lonely Thug” might be the only thing that sounds like Baron Libre on here, besides maybe  “Tongue." 

“Failed" sounds just as its title suggests- dejected, melancholy, “Fish” like your brain is an egg yolk being deep fried by the Sun which then gives way to the longing and mournful "Wound". Reminescent of Ghersi’s vocals on "Avila” but transhuman, Ghersi sounds like the discontent of a pack of space wolves roaming, howling, searching for solace in space tundra. It is in “Wound” where we breach the security levels of Xen. She is vulnerable. She goes on stealth mode and ejaculates into the sadomasochistic industrial techno of "Bullet Chained" (sounding a lot like "On Sight" here, but you know, better) as if Xen the androgynous android were on a runway dodging drone strikes- synthy dance cataclysm with an elegant finish. “Tongue" licks with low frequencies and frenetic wobble bass-the affair sounds like locusts slicing at the airspace of Xen. Xen can go no further. Xen must self destruct - her swan song, the closing number "Promise" sounds like an epic implosion of the sonic biosphere Arca created for her. 

So is “Xen” Arca’s best work to date? It is definitely his most antisocial undertaking- as if he was providing a soundtrack to a myriad of mental diseases being carved out of modern alienation. But Arca also does the same for crafting modern euphoria, sounding like our collective & disjointed projections of what future popular music might (and does) sound like. Xen is a record for listeners who enjoy exploring the nervous recesses of wayward (yet mischievous and playful) mental states. Call me weird, but if the euthanasia coasters of transhumanist potential futures become a reality, I might choose to go out to Arca’s music- it is that cerebral, cinematic, epic. Whether you would ride out to Stretch 2, &&&&& Xen or any other Arca release is entirely up to taste and mood. Lately, I’ve been feeling pretty Xen. 

Arca - "Thievery"

While no one’s going to deny that Arca’s solo output so far -- the collection of three excellent EP’s which earned him the #2 spot in our 2012 Albums of the Year countdown, plus a mixtape that had its own film played at MOMA last year -- should be enough merit to justify the attention the Venezuelan producer has been enjoying lately, there will be few out there arguing against the fact that it’s his collaborations with Kanye West and FKA Twigs that gave him his biggest moment on the spotlight yet. Or at least, his more accessible. That could all change very soon as excitement seems to be everywhere for Arca’s upcoming debut album (called Xen, and to be released via Mute on November 3). The increase in attention that Arca’s material has been gathering isn't really due to an improvement or transition in his production (the new track could fit in either Barón Libre or &&&&& and actually not even stand out), but rather to the fact that, thanks to Yeezy and Twigs, he’s no longer one of the best kept secrets in off-kilter electronic music. His aesthetic might be even less-inviting than before: the cover art finds new levels for the post-human imagery of Jesse Kanda, and the music is much more focused on mood rather than movement, although the breakbeat might finally earn the producer a spot on a few dancefloors. But if there’s anything that “Thievery” makes clear, it’s just how much Arca’s prints are all over the work of his recent collaborators: the screechy synths could make for a beat for Twigs to sing over, and with the grim piano melody, also carries all the chagrin and fuzziness that made Yeezus such a distinctively produced rap record. For most of these last couple of years, the whole world has been listening to Arca via the footprints he’s left in his collaborators output. But with Xen the whole world is finally going to be listening to what Arca can do on his own. It’s his chance to take the spotlight for himself.

Arca - &&&&&

&&&&&, Arca
Hippos In Tanks, Venezuela
Rating: 83
by Carlos Reyes

Pierre Lestruhaut was the first critic to write a proper album review for Arca. Within hours of its publication, the mastermind behind it (Alejandro Ghersi, formerly known around these parts as Nuuro) reached out to us hoping we could adjust our review for Baron Libre. The Venezuelan producer explained that he envisioned this project as something coming out of a black canvas, hoping to pull off an anonymous contour a la Burial. To which we agreed (with very little enthusiasm) to remove his name (and a whole introductory paragraph) from the review. Such request seems silly now. Little did Ghersi know that just one year later, his name would appear on every publication out there as he became exposed to world acknowledgment as one of the producers of Yeezus, the most mystifying album by Kanye West.

Since we never really got to properly introduce Ghersi’s incarnation as Arca, we might as well do so now. Despite earning a glorious emancipation with The Reddest Ruby, Nuuro never seemed to escape the description of being a prodigy producer. I’m sure I’m not the only that still carries “Safe Safe Safe” and “256 MB of Love” on my ipod. The idea of letting them go doesn’t sit well with me. But it’s only a transitory feeling. Because whenever I find myself trapped in the world of Arca, there really isn’t any other music I’d rather be listening to. Ghersi got bold and serious with Arca. And as the very brave Lestruhaut pointed out on his second time reviewing him (Stretch 2), Arca also became a very difficult act to articulate about. Perhaps I’m taking the easy route to approach his music, but dissecting an artist’s past, and making good terms with it, makes the journalistic duty less intimidating.

Much like reviewing Baron Libre and the two volumes of Stretch, Arca’s sole release this year is a challenge. Conceptually, &&&&& could be read as either Arca’s most selective release yet, or as its less official work yet. Considering he had three releases last year, we could make the case this is his most collected reference yet. In the other hand, this one has been structured as a mixtape, and thus, it doesn’t carry the essential assertion of an official release. Whichever way it was conceived, &&&& is far from a novelty. From the get-go, it’s best to make peace with the mixtape's dense inscrutability. Ghersi’s experimental endeavors here are interchangeably exciting, maddening, perverse, and terrifying.

The fact that the mixtape isn’t fragmented by individual tracks makes it hard to pinpoint to precise hotspots, and that actually makes things exciting. Of course, there are defined choices made by Ghersi that stand out: the whimsical fairies on minute four, the unconsoling piano on minute twelve, the terrifying howl on minute seventeen, and the verbalization of a post-everything society at the twenty-one minute mark. At 25min. long, &&&& is ever-peeling but not superfluous. There’s an emotional restraint/awakening in its genetics that resonates well with the human condition. Like its artwork, &&&&& is cacophonic, broken and grotesque. Arca provokes and dislocates, but also provides shelter under his umbrella. It’s like imagining Werner Herzog and David Lynch sharing a seesaw –like taking a peek into a future that’s already here.