Album Review: Arca - KiCk i

Releasing her fourth album, Arca delivers an immaculately produced album of avant pop that is a mesmerising celebration of self-determination and transformation. Arca started her career by producing lusciously beautiful ambient electronic instrumentals that were delivered somewhat anonymously. Across her four albums we have seen Arca finding her voice and deepening the emotions to create a deeper connection with her listeners and hardcore fans known as Mutants. The recent video for Nonbinary is all about rebirth and illustrates her relatively recent embrace of a trans Latinx identity. Nonbinary is however a lot more than just an aggressive update of La Cage aux Folles' I Am What I Am and it finds Arca rather brilliantly dissecting braggadocious hip hop with surgical precision and reassembling it with futuristic spin to create a safe space in which she can spit some flow.

Soft introspective moments wrapped up in the dreamiest of electronic sounds are an essential part of any Arca album and wistful cuts like No Queda Nada and Calor certainly tick this box. On Afterwards, Bjork weighs in with a powerfully emotional performance complete with astonishing vocal gymnastics and she manages to be nothing less than spellbinding. The biggest surprise Arca deals are the dancefloor bangers. Mequetrefe and Watch reveal a certain fascination for Latin club music, but deconstructed into experimental abstraction there’s still plenty of bounce to these intricate and exotic rhythms to work the floor. Singer Rosalía is the bomb that turns KLK into a joyous explosion of swirling colour and light. Weirdly, La Chiqui featuring Sophie feels like a descent into industrial rave hell. Arca goes pop on KiCk i and it’s at once a point of departure, but also the logical next step in her career.