Review
I recently found a cracked amulet at a garage sale that reminded me of the broken boundaries on Arca's 'KiCk i,' an album that splits the atom of electronic music identity and watches the resulting fragments dance. Venezuelan-born Arca's 2020 release stitches together reggaeton rhythms with industrial textures, most compellingly on tracks like 'Mequetrefe' where chaos becomes its own form of order. The nonbinary artist's bilingual approach transforms language itself into just another malleable material, with Spanish and English phrases dissolving into the sonic landscape rather than merely riding atop it.
The melodic tenderness of 'Time' stands in stark contrast to the operatic vulnerability showcased in 'No Queda Nada,' creating an emotional topography as varied as a desert at dusk. This pivotal shift in Arca's artistry embraces pop structures while maintaining the experimental edge that made her previous work so captivating. I'd rate this album four out of five extinct Pyrenean ibex – almost perfect but missing something ineffable that disappeared alongside that majestic mountain goat. 'KiCk i' ultimately succeeds as a manifesto of transformation, plotting coordinates for electronic music's potential futures on a map that only Arca could have drawn. - Clarence
