Arca reveals all about her new album and the musical frenzy it promises to be

In 2018 she announced that she was trans, a page-turner she describes as less of a dramatic reveal, and more of a transformational process; a departure from reality that she always knew was true. At the same time, she recognizes that her right to live openly as a woman is not something she could take for granted, had she not left her native country. “As a migrant in the literal sense, I find that all queer people are migrants from some border,” says Arca. “There is a security and a privilege accorded to those who can cross borders without much challenge. The more you explicitly show yourself to your loved ones, to the family you were born into, to the community you belong to, I think that's already a heroic act."

Arca's ties to Latin America run deep. Although she has not visited Venezuela in almost a decade, she still feels the spirit of the country in her bones. “My skin breaks out and strange things happen to my body everywhere, except when I am in Venezuela. Everything may be falling apart, but in Caracas, the earth is literally bursting with mangoes and coconuts, splitting on sidewalks everywhere. No matter what happens politically there, it is still a place that has a paradisiacal quality, because the climate is very beautiful, the vegetation, the humidity... That is something that you can never get rid of.”

It's no coincidence, then, that Arca's thoughtful approach to her Latin American heritage has been on display in Kick, right down to her collaborators, including Venezuelan producer Cardopusher. With Kick, however, these diverse strands become celebratory odes to Latin musical legacies, this time intentionally more digestible, channeling salsa or merengue or Venezuela's own gaita, and compressing them through the weird and wonderful filter. of your current soundscape.

“When I was in high school, I wanted to be different, so I listened to metal, IDM, glitch music, R&B,” she recalls; while referencing his collaboration titled KLK with Rosalía for Kick i, which takes the visceral rumble of the traditional Venezuelan furruco drum and transforms it into a sound that Ghersi likens to that of a “sub-bass” over a throbbing reggaeton beat. “When I left Venezuela, that fell on me like a ton of bricks, because of how much I missed it. What makes reggaeton distinctly reggaeton is that by deconstructing it, what remains is so rare and so elegant. You could have percussionists and music theorists speculating for hours on why this beat is contagious and why it is capable of holding and carrying a regional and also recognizable message; but at the same time global, contagious and universal. And at the end of the day, fun. It's a catchy beat, it owns you. I love that".