The Venezuela-born, Barcelona-based electronic innovator Arca has long made a feature of colliding sound-worlds and destabilising identities. Across three albums (four, if you’re counting the 62-minute track @@@@@) of mercurial productions, chaos and beauty have intertwined. Hand in hand with Arca’s fluid, writhing music have come inquiries into post-gender and non-binary selves.
KiCk I offers up an even broader palette than previously, while keeping up a steady diet of trademark dissonance alongside those slightly more overground ambitions. Stark album opener Nonbinary comes out fighting on behalf of “self-states”, while a handful of tracks plumb Arca’s Latinx heritage even more assiduously than previously: Mequetrefe is as close to pop as this artist has come; Riquiqui features a plethora of rhythmic Spanish voices over intricate clatter.
Guests are another addition. It’s no surprise to hear Björk’s ululations lighting up Afterwards (Arca contributed extensively to her 2015 album Vulnicura), but it’s a shock to hear her sing in Spanish. There are star turns, too, for the Spanish R&B diva Rosalía and south London rapper Shygirl on a pair of glitchily grandstanding party tunes. A much-awaited summit with fellow hyper-digital traveller Sophie, La Chiqui, however, isn’t quite the planet-tilting tête-a-tête it might have been.
