Stream: Arca “&&&&&”

25 Jul 2013 — Henry Schiller

Arca got a major boost in popularity this year when it was revealed that the producer contributed to Kanye West’s Yeezus LP. The strange explosive contours of Yeezus, influenced by hard electronica, could not have possibly prepared me for Arca’s first mixtape &&&&&. This could hardly be called an instrumental hip hop release; even though I could definitely conceive of a more prodigious MC spitting over these tracks, they’re far weirder and more steeped in found-sound electronics than what we usually see in the genre. &&&&& reminds me of The-Drum’s Contact which was released earlier this month; each expertly blends dynamic ambience with harder dub concepts. &&&&& is even weirder and more unpredictable than Contact, as Arca has also blended in hip hop vocal samples and piano lines remniscent of silent film scores.

It’s hard to distinguish between the different tracks on &&&&& because the Soundcloud stream makes no visible differentiation between them. The first track, “Knot”, has an aquatic arpeggiation that seems to be attempting to escape the confines of a dub beat. The repeating melody literally presses up against the highest issue of the track’s threshold, causing small vibrations in your ears. No doubt it was Arca’s intent to give the song a sort of violent urgency; and urgency is certainly a term one could use to describe &&&&&. The idea of wild, oscillating electronics and synthesizer pieces being trapped within hard dubstep beats its prevalent throughout &&&&&. This often gives the mixtape a weirdly polyrhythmic motif, as a balance between distinctly hip hop beats and fairly experimental melodic structures is found.

Listen to &&&&& in its entirety below, and download it for free over at Arca’s Soundcloud page.

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