Arca - Mutant
ARCA - Mutant
There is pop music, there is avant-garde experimentation, and then there is Arca. The young Venezuelan wunderkind became a household name after producing for Bjørk, Kanye West and FKA Twigs, and in his second solo effort, he crafts an abrasive and vicious aural assault that is difficult to fault.
This is emphatically not everyone’s jam: unapologetically brutal and scattered, Arca still manages to find coherence and even dancefloor-worthy breaks among the sonic web he spins. The title track ‘Mutant’ is particularly ruthless, embracing silence as a disorienting tactic in almost unprecedented fashion, before slamming into tortured vocal samples and eventually, mercifully, finding a rhythm.
Through the dizzying haze of electronic stabs, one can see Arca poised over the mess as a composer with immense control. It’s evident in the exquisitely delicate piano work in ‘Else’; the discordant twanging of alien strings in ‘Gratitud’; the exploration of the human voice outside of song (‘En’); perfectly toned thudding basslines (‘Sinner’); and the inevitable diving back, headlong, into the electrical storm (in ‘Faggot’, a song as immediate and bracing as one would expect).
He even has the grace and restraint to save the best for last – ‘Soichiro’, a magnificent track in its own right, gains immeasurable gravity from its placement near the record’s end.
Expansive, immersive, harsh, isolating and often overwhelming, Mutant is a sign of a great visionary flexing his muscles. This is music worth evolving for.
There is pop music, there is avant-garde experimentation, and then there is Arca. The young Venezuelan wunderkind became a household name after producing for Bjørk, Kanye West and FKA Twigs, and in his second solo effort, he crafts an abrasive and vicious aural assault that is difficult to fault.
This is emphatically not everyone’s jam: unapologetically brutal and scattered, Arca still manages to find coherence and even dancefloor-worthy breaks among the sonic web he spins. The title track ‘Mutant’ is particularly ruthless, embracing silence as a disorienting tactic in almost unprecedented fashion, before slamming into tortured vocal samples and eventually, mercifully, finding a rhythm.
Through the dizzying haze of electronic stabs, one can see Arca poised over the mess as a composer with immense control. It’s evident in the exquisitely delicate piano work in ‘Else’; the discordant twanging of alien strings in ‘Gratitud’; the exploration of the human voice outside of song (‘En’); perfectly toned thudding basslines (‘Sinner’); and the inevitable diving back, headlong, into the electrical storm (in ‘Faggot’, a song as immediate and bracing as one would expect).
He even has the grace and restraint to save the best for last – ‘Soichiro’, a magnificent track in its own right, gains immeasurable gravity from its placement near the record’s end.
Expansive, immersive, harsh, isolating and often overwhelming, Mutant is a sign of a great visionary flexing his muscles. This is music worth evolving for.
★★★★★
Mutant is available now on Mute Records.
Mutant is available now on Mute Records.
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