Mark your calendars for Dec. 3, because Arca has a lot in store for us. Arriving alongside her previously announced KICK ii and KicK iii is kick iiii (Dec. 3, XL Recordings), completing the four-album KICK anthology. The last installment features a variety of collaborators, including Garbage’s Shirley Manson and cellist Oliver Coates, bringing together the Venezuelan producer’s expansive vision that concludes with a futuristic take on pop music.
The album announcement arrives with the first single off kick iiii, “Queer,” featuring electronic producer Planningtorock. The single is reminiscent of the shakiness of an A.I. learning for the first time, with squeals and disjointed synths that slowly come together into sensual pop ecstasy. Arca and Planningtorock bounce off each other in perfect dissonance, filling in each other’s gaps.
Speaking on the meaning behind the album, Arca says:
kick 4 is an entry of sensual charge in the cycle; my own faith made into song, a posthuman celestial sparkle, psychosexual pulsewidth modulation, queering the void, abyss alchemically transmuted into a deconstruction of what is beautiful, it is a healing spell, recognition of the alien inside, a bursting apart of old skin, fresh new sinew rippling outward from a beating core, the first prenatal kick — proof that there is a sentience with a will beyond its creators’ control expressing itself from within the womb.
