Arca’s ‘XXXXX’ is an ecstatic return to mixtape-era form
Fans of @@@@@ and &&&&& will be happy.
Saint aka Cassandra Antoniades.
Arca's first album in five years is both a pivot and return.
In 2020, she expanded her world building into epic, multi-part terrain with her KICK pentalogy. Those albums unfurled with lullaby-like compositional works, strobe-lit Reggaeton, noise music, ambient, and more. The series undoubtably spelled a new era of ambition for Arca, but its epic scope meant that it didn't necessarily have the whirlwind momentum of her earlier mixtapes, namely 2013's &&&&& which was, personally, my favorite kinda of project by Arca.
On her latest album, XXXXX, out today, however, Arca straddles both cinematic atmosphere and pure noise, creating an environment and ethos that is equal parts organic and bloodied and machine. Songs like "Willow" see her pairing a Clams Casino-like ambiance with an 8-bit counterpoint, an electric fuzz floating through a misty wind. My favorite track, "Fxck," features glittering percussion and epic bass stabs, its neat compassion informed by a classic pop progression. On it she sings, "Kill the father," a line that takes on epic resonance as the song builds into a full pop-inflected symphony, crushing patriarchy and power with bass and drums.
Overall, the album is less a journey than a study in multi-polarity, a psychedelic tumble through sounds and genres and expression. The string-laden "Finisher" recalls her magisterial work on Björk's Vulnicura. The spacious and huge "Throb" drowns the listener in dense layers of reverb. "Everything" — glitchy, breathing, gasping — sounds like a sonic birth, a slow-moving becoming as its stutters slow into phrases. Album closer, "Sueño," picks up the glitched pants of "Throb" and stretches it into a sustained scream.
In 2013, Arca explored similar varied landscapes on &&&&&. There were songs, like "Mother," that sounded like a detuned piano revelry in the vein of Aphex Twin. There was the chopped, screwed, and melted dance piece "Pinch," and the serene, quasi-IDM of "Obelisk." The unpredictability and sense of intuition that haunted &&&&& made it a thrilling, often surprising listen, and showed a younger me how one artist could display their multitudes without being flashy or frenzied, but bold.
After five years of relative musical quiet, XXXXX comes back as a nimble and varied show of force from Arca, less a total musical world than a piece of free expression. There's an energy and ease to it. An X-factor, if you will. I'm glad to have Arca back releasing solo albums in any way, but especially like this.
