Mutant

Venezuelan producer Arca has announced his new album Mutant, the follow-up to last year's Xen.Arca’s 2014 album ‘Xen’ was an angular and, at times, insular record driven by aggressively queer juxtapositions. It served as a study of the self that refused categorisation and embraced erraticism; employing confrontational clashes of style and sound to emphasise a morphing dynamic between obscurity and vulnerability. At times anxiously self-reflexive, at others beauteous and calm, it was intermittently personal and withdrawn. ‘Mutant’ is about sensuality and impulsiveness as escape routes out of rigidity: “softness as a weapon when the mind attacks itself.” Anxieties are harmonised by self-confidence in the optimism and inclusiveness of transformation. Mutations expose the resonances and malleability of identity. This album takes pride in deformity, innocence, distortion and vulnerability: traits traditionally ostracised as undesirable and regressive. The 2014 release of Arca’s ‘Xen’ saw him grace the cover of FADER Magazine and be placed at #3 in Dazed’s inaugural Dazed 100, their definitive run-down of the pioneers shaking style and culture. Arca was also included in Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30: The Next Generation Of Music Stars list alongside Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, HAIM and A$AP Rocky.

1. Alive
2. Mutant
3. Vanity
4. Sinner
5. Anger
6. Sever
7. Beacon
8. Snakes
9. Else
10. Umbilical
11. Hymn
12. Front Load
13. Gratitud
14. En
15. Siren Interlude
16. Extent
17. Envelopeped
18. Faggot
19. Soichiro
20. Peonies