From there, KICK ii fragments into sketch-like mutations after that initial trio of bangers, the abstract “Araña,” “Femme,” and “Muñecas” feel like three interstitials in a row. “Luna Llena” and “Lethargy” are slower and sultrier, suffused in Harold Budd-esque piano and processed vocals the beat of the latter consists of little more than plunging bass and samples of hissing breath. They’re among the fiercest songs in Arca’s catalog to date. In “Tiro,” she commands listeners’ attention in clipped, staccato tones-“Tacones negros, falda beige/Labios rojos, mira, mírame” (“Black heels, beige dress/Red lips, look, look at me”)-in between reeling off Venezuelan place names, as though she could upend North/South geopolitics by the sheer force of her sexual magnetism. It’s worth noting just how funny she can be repeating the syllable “ya,” she adopts a sing-song tone that bounces like a slow-motion yo-yo. (Fellow Barcelona-based Venezuelan expat Cardopusher co-produced all three Boys Noize also contributed to “Tiro.”) In “Rakata,” she comes off as a metaphysical poet of horny-on-main: “Que me como al mundo ya/Con estas ganas de follar ya” (“I could devour the world now/With this urge to fuck”). Variously shouting out Prada heels, her beloved “transformistas,” and the “gringos” and “güeros” throwing bills in the air, Arca cuts a larger-than-life figure bestowed with a voracious desire. All three feel like clear extensions of KiCK i’s “Mequetrefe” and “KLK,” but they also stand on their own: Swimming with plangent synth melodies that recall ’90s trance, they move with an aquaticism that contrasts with Arca’s fiery vocal takes. Following an eerie, abstract intro in the form of “Doña,” a witchy invocation set to skittering FX, the first three proper songs delve into crisp, clipped percussion arrayed into loping dembow rhythms. Outwardly, each volume has its own character, and although those distinctions tend to blur as you go deeper into each disc, KICK ii is generally identifiable as the reggaeton album. Their 47 songs testify to Arca’s giddy penchant for excess, and the way the four volumes tangle together reinforce the idea that she is uninterested in following any path for long-even one of her own design. There was no shortage of variety, but it felt as if she had tamed some of the chaos, gotten used to saying “or” instead of “and.” Volumes two through five complicate the picture once again. The sound design was cleaner and more pristine in place of the airy falsetto of 2017’s Arca, her vocals shouldered to the front of the mix, particularly on club-centric songs like “Nonbinary,” “Mequetrefe,” and the Rosalía collaboration “KLK.” Though her rhythms shuddered as violently as ever, they focused more narrowly on reggaeton and trap-influenced grooves. Arca was no stranger to pop music’s periphery, having collaborated early on with Kanye, FKA twigs, and Björk, but KiCk i felt like the first major step toward reinvention as a pop star in her own right. Last year’s KiCk i heralded a new phase in the Barcelona-based musician’s career. Four new albums, released across four consecutive days in late November and early December- KICK ii, KicK iii, kick iiii, revealed in a staggered series of announcements over the past couple of months, followed by the surprise kiCK iiiii-offer a sprawling, multidimensional picture of that everythingness. It’s right there in the title of &: andandandandand-not this or that but everything all at once. She speaks of her work in terms of quantum states a proudly nonbinary trans woman, she celebrates her own multiplicity, and as an artist, she revels in the right not to have to choose. She has swung from amoebic abstractions to spleen-crushing club experiments and from tender arias to Kevlar-coated reggaeton, sometimes in the course of a single album. Later that year, she used an AI to generate 100 versions of her song “Riquiquí.” The Venezuelan-born electronic musician was equally cavalier about format: On the 2013 mixtape & and 2016’s Entrañas, she strung together bewildering assemblages of rhythms and textures into maze-like 25-minute suites on 2020’s she mapped an even more labyrinthine path through a single-track collage more than an hour long. Her first two EPs, 2012’s Stretch 1 and Stretch 2, oozed beyond category, harbingers of an elasticity then creeping into the fringes of electronic music. From the very beginning, it has thrived on its intractability.
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