Pushing experimental pop production to its very limits, shadowy Brooklyn producer Alejandro Ghersi, aka Arca, has left his fingerprints on a slew of high-profile collaborations with Kanye West, Bjork, Kelela, Mykki Blanco and FKA Twigs.
As Arca, Ghersi combines his boundary-pushing sound design with deeply personal inspirations to create surreal and uniquely expressive Avant-pop. During a childhood marked by a deep-seated struggle with sexuality, Ghersi frequently employed the ambiguously genderless alter ego Xen while diarising his feelings. In 2014, Arca revived this dissociative alias for the title of a deeply introspective and experimental album (Xen) which stood as a benchmark for what Ghersi’s talents could achieve, and his new album Mutant continues to build outwards from the artistic foundation of the previous LP. While Xen was an artistic examination of self, Mutant draws inspiration from the interpersonal relationships which have defined the producer’s life.
From the very get go, Arca’s seductive and hypnotic production draws the listener into his world. Defying genre and songwritng convention, minimalistic sonic textures rendered from warped experimental noise form the core of Arca’s signature sound. One feature that tethers Arca’s music to our conventional musical language is the faint traces of hip hop inspiration which lurks beneath the aggression of Arca’s driving beats.
Alive opens the album with stuttering strobes of abrasive noise and static synthesised sounds. These salvos of crashing experimental noise seethe and shift, never lingering too long upon a single melody, timbre or sonic element. Sharing the album’s title, second track Mutant delivers sparse, yet immersive sonic textures, processed beyond recognition to meld into a dark illusionary world. The disorientating track climaxes in an emotive moment of feverish euphoria, conveyed by ascending arpeggios and the warm textures of warped strings.
With towering experimental sounds akin to noise duo Fuck Buttons circa Street Horrrsing, Vanity’s plucked synths and ambient pads evoke feelings of transcendence. As the name might suggest, ambient fifth track Anger is underpinned by hissing and simmering synths, with furious ever-skipping beats littered between. Fleeting samples of Latino radio throwback to the producer’s childhood in Venezuela.
Returning to themes of sexuality and struggle for identity, Faggot makes sonic references to Xen, with incisive chimes and reverberant vocals that blend into following track Soichiro. Acting as an outro, Peonies ebbs in energy, sending the album slowly drifting towards its inevitable conclusion.
Creating something which resonates from that which is many ways alien, Mutant’s expressive improvisatory tracks seduce the listener into taking a journey through the producer’s dark inner reality. Oscillating between melancholic swells, delicate euphoria and primal aggression Mutant creates an unconventional sonic environments encompassing fantasy worlds and booming alien soundscapes. While Mutant may lack some of the novelty of Xen, Arca continues to deliver some phenomenal work with his otherworldly and deeply emotive tracks.
Mutant will be released November 20. Pre-order the album here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SYMoTBYT04
Well the nominations for the VMAs are out, and as usual, they’re pretty sub par. Instead of simply reporting or criticising it, we’ve decided to list some of our own choices below. So here they are, our picks for the 2015 Howl & Echoes Video Music Awards!
Arca – Thievery
Stand aside Anaconda. Look, I completely understand that Nicki’s sordid lyrics and jiggly behind completely ‘broke the internet’ (fuck I hate that phrase). But Arca and Jesse Kanda’s collaboration on the clip for Thievery with its naked, ungendered dancer plugs into the decline of heteronormativity in a way that Nicki never could. By animating this bruised, hypersexualised figure twerking, Kanda presents the body as kind of pornogrified canvas. Admit it, it’s true. Ass-clapping isn’t really hairless, HD and benign. Its sex, and sex is ugly and primal (and also everything).
FKA Twigs – Glass & Patron
Twiggsy. Oh how I love you. This one really did it for me. Especially the beginning where Twigs scratches her acrylics over her pregnant belly, and then proceeds to pull streams of fluorescent laden-with-dancers silk from her nether regions. It gives new meaning to artistic birth, by means of the female body. We all know the female body needs to be reimaged and repurposed by women (not men), and that is what Twigs did. Special mention goes to the absolutely flawless voguing with the on-fleek ballroom queen’s themselves, Alex Mugler and Javier Ninja lending their FIAH.
Kelela – A Message
Kelela is amazing, and this clip is no exception. For most of the clip, Kelela stands in the spotlight like an obsidian statue. The light glides off her collarbones and chest like it would off black-stone. The whole thing is a beautiful and proud presentation of her body and race. About halfway through, a purple ghost-light is thrown on her figure as she dances. Suddenly, a cloak of cartoon-green enwraps her and transforms her into an anime character. Her body splits and collapses in on itself, in a painted rendition of “rejection and amputation”. It is an art piece of galactic proportions.
Zebra Katz x Leila – You Tell Em
I don’t think that enough people know about Zebra Katz. Basically, Ojay Morgan is part of the queer hip hop artists that emerged in the 2010s (Le1f, Mykki Blanco, House of Ladosha etc.). As Zebra Katz he describes himself as “the dark rapper, the dark villain, the dark lord of the fashion world”. I feel like he should have been given the whole cast of Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood. He would have had them writhing in asymmetric gear to his hard hitting minimalist rap. In the clip for You Tell Em, he douses old TVs and screens with a flamethrower, as stoic jacket-wearing models stand around him. The piece screams darkwave multimedia artist (scary…I know).
GENER8ION + M.I.A. – The New International Sound Part II
M.I.A. is back. This clip consists mostly of outtakes from Dragon Girls, a documentary about three young females who learn Kung Fu at a school, which homes over 20,000 students. IT captures the exhaustion and pain experienced when trying to achieve physical and mental perfection. The visual language of the clip stands as a powerful metaphor for the modern struggle. Individuals must distinguish themselves from an ever-growing and homogeneous mass. Can we though? M.I.A. obviously can.
Arca’s new video Xen is a trip and a half. We’re still reeling from the release of debut album, also named Xen, a challenging and incredibly intricate album, obscure and confronting at times, mesmerising at others. I would describe the album as digital more than electronic, if that makes sense. Tracks traipse between psychotic turmoil and eerie sereneness, between glitch and ambience, between beauty and utter darkness. All in all, it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s not something I can ilisten to every day, but it’s absolutely worth a full run-through.
The video is a collaboration between Arca (who has worked with the likes of Bjork and Kanye West) and long time friend Kanda, who also designed the album artwork.
Watch here: