Photo Credit: Daniel Sannwald
Few artists have spent the last decade reshaping electronic music as radically as Arca. From the fractured industrial landscapes of Xen and Mutant to the sprawling Kick series, Alejandra Ghersi has consistently treated genre less as a framework than as something to dismantle and reconstruct. On XXXXX, her first full-length album in five years, she pushes that philosophy further, delivering a record that feels less like a collection of songs and more like an organism in constant mutation.
Clocking in at just under 50 minutes across 16 tracks, XXXXX is surprisingly focused despite its relentless unpredictability. The album opens with the brief ambient invocation “No End” before slipping into “Willow,” where shimmering melodies dissolve into metallic percussion and distorted vocal fragments. It’s a reminder that Arca remains unmatched in her ability to make beauty emerge from chaos.
Where the Kick albums often bounced between extremes like reggaeton, club mutations, hyperpop and ambient interludes, XXXXX feels more unified. The production is colder, darker and more cinematic, with glitchy textures, orchestral flourishes and industrial rhythms coexisting in an uneasy but captivating balance. Tracks like “Heart” and “Syncope” pulse with mechanical intensity, while “Fxck” explodes into one of the album’s most aggressive moments, weaponising distortion without sacrificing rhythmic momentum. “Everything” emerges late in the record as one of its emotional centrepieces, allowing melody to take precedence over abrasion, while the closing “Sueño” offers a haunting meditation that lingers long after the final notes fade.
One of the album’s greatest achievements is how physical it feels. Every kick drum seems to reverberate through the body, every vocal manipulation feels tactile rather than merely digital. Even the album’s quieter passages carry a sense of tension, as though the music could rupture into noise at any moment. Rather than presenting technology as something sterile, Arca transforms it into something deeply human, messy, vulnerable and alive.
Listen to XXXXX:
