âEverything has been doneâ is a trap to keep us in the chicken pen, clucking the same song and eating the good old corn, pecking around for new grains that taste like nostalgia.
I took these words as fact till I found âARCAâ Alejandro Ghers, a Venezuelan producer known for the production and songwriting on FKA Twigs (water me ep), and working closely with Bjork (vulnicura).
Her first album named âXenâ meaning (alien, strange, guest) references her feminine spirit. The heavily experimental album is full of textured motif synths that are purposely off-key mixed with scratchy fall-apart beats.
The third album named âArcaâ feels more accessible and fully formed song-wise, in âReverâ you first hear Arcaâs strong operatic voice singing in spanish, the lyrics were taken from the Venezuelan folk classic âCaballo Viejoâ. The song shakes with vulnerability but transcends on a euphoric level.
Most of Arcas influences remain a mystery but she seems sensitively responsive to her experiences in transgendering from a man, to non-binary and now a trans woman.
Her music is futuristic and her performance is emotionally charged. The whole of Arcaâs being is theater. Her lust to do things differently means we are watching her self discovery at every release as she continues to develop.
Arca is not a one trick pony and never does something twice, like in her New York residency of sound and performance she dances on a 9-foot stripper pole synthesizer, plays a baby grand piano sculpted to a spider and rides a mechanical bull. Arca cheerleads the beauty in grotesque.
Arca uses a wide range of sounds from gothic, golden, almost religious sounding pitched vocal melodies to stop/start disheveled club beats. As if the music is a pieced together memory of the night before. Her music is hyperactive, hypersexual with disorientating beats and bass.
She is challenging us to become even more free with new sounds asking if we want to nonjudgmentally, enjoy, trust her new ideas that may feel or sound âwrongâ at first.
As it is to let go and understand non-binary pronouns as a heterosexual female/male, instead of labelling/attacking âthe newâ defensively to feel in control of the fears of being out of depth.
If you want to join the club and hear that ânew soundâ you first have to bite the olive and not spit it out. The question is âCan you handle a loud adrenaline-fueled, trans fluid Venzsuelan womanâ? Or would you rather stick to the fast food of the mainstream music industry that is picked for us by the elite.
Most new music is stuck in time replicating and romanticizing an era, looking & sounding like it could actually be from eg: the 1980s. I feel our generation of music is propped up by the crutch of the past.
But like a tree growing through barbed wire, Arca is unpredictable and unapologetically shocking: a truly fearless leader in new music and has never been done before.
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