Arca
Kick I

I remember, as if it were today, the surprise in discovering what would become the electronic album that, for me, remains the most beautiful and moving of the '10s: I am referring to the Self-Title album of the reviewed here, Arca, registered as Alejandra Ghersi, a composer of extraordinary talent (originally Alejandro, having pursued a fully documented process of gender change on social media, especially Instagram, since 2018), with an avant-garde (truly avant-garde) approach imprinted in her DNA, initially with her first two instrumental works, and then with her masterpiece, where she integrates her extraordinary twisted vocality, a synthesis of inner, aesthetic, and musical research, combined with a depth of writing truly difficult to find elsewhere.

So you understand very well with what hopes and with what eager anticipation I awaited this new Kick I, and now that for a couple of days it has been in continuous rotation in my player, in an attempt to grasp every hidden corner, every single nuance, in an attempt to dissect it trying to understand every reason that led Arca to change so much compared to my beloved previous album, I think I've reached a point: along with her sexuality, Alejandra has changed the way she approaches the world and with this also the way of approaching musical material. While "Arca" was a dark album, melancholic to the core, sometimes sad, other times desolate, where it was hard to find a glimpse through which even a minimal ray of light could enter, "Kick I" is simply the kick, post-transition, that Alejandra gives to all the past torments; thus we are delivered an album more edgy, more open to external contamination (Techno, Raeggaton from hyperspace, R&B, etc.), but airier, less bleak, where the artist confronts for the first time other personalities of today's music scene (the beloved Bjork, Rosalia, Sophie, Shygirl), deriving an album perhaps less emotionally powerful compared to the past, but not less fascinating and extended into the future of music.

From the beautiful Nonbinary to the melancholic and Björk-esque No Queda Nada, a journey into Alejandra's new general vision, a journey full of nuances and different styles, sometimes too disorienting, sometimes sensational, a journey made of glitches, ascensions into hyperspace, mutant electronics, almost industrial rhythms, avant-garde deconstructions, filled with an overflowing personality, lyricism, and originality difficult to find elsewhere, a possibly tentative journey that precedes something much greater but which already, from now, crowns her as queen of contemporary music.