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Cutting-edge Venezuelan DJ, producer & visual artist 06/11/26
We recently shared a Madonna articlewhich featured a behind the scenes look at the collaboration with Arca (Venezuelan DJ, producer & visual artist) for Madge’s latest album. Here she is in conversation with Resident Advisor – with an accompanying article here. This video seeks to explore her early days making music, playing the piano, and her sonic experiments. Arca’s new album ‘XXXXX’ is available here
Here’s a personal favourite track, stay with it…
Here’s more from the video…
One of experimental music’s most daring producers is now one of this era’s defining stars. Where does Arca go next?
For our summer cover story, we sat down with the Venezuelan DJ, producer and visual artist for her most in-depth on-camera conversation about her music yet. In this intimate studio session, she breaks down her sonic language and creative process, and reflects on her latest album, XXXXX.
Read the full cover story here: https://ra.co/features/4520
And an excerpt from the RA article:
Arca is sitting at her dining table deliberating whether to get a French tip manicure. She leans forward and studiously examines each nail varnish colour, as if they’re all trying to tell her something. “Transformation is everything,” she said, holding her hand up to the nail tech’s miniature lamp. “It can become a portal to healing and growth–even the small transformations.” To Arca, what seems quotidian has the potential to set off chains of renewal. And so in her eyes, her nails represent tiny cycles of regeneration; the rebirth of the day, the look of the month, the “magnitude of each small action that we can’t see” over a year. A sip from her Santa Teresa whiskey cocktail, and she’s set: French tip it is.
Not many artists can so casually inject sacred weight into the superficial. Then again, not everyone is Arca. The Venezuelan DJ, producer and visual artist–Alejandra Ghersi to her friends and family–has built an entirely fresh musical language coloured by human and synthetic complexity. She shoots the dark shadows of heavy bass, industrial and noise through a prism of transcendent pop melodies and neoclassical ambient, always projecting the sublime. She’s seemingly allergic to being defined, bypassing predictable four-on-the-floor for rhythms that stretch, snap and fragment mid-track. Much like Ghersi, her music is unfixed, a constantly shapeshifting electronic maelstrom.
About the author [midierror]: midierror is co-founder of Potato Audio, he makes nifty Max For Live devices, award-winning Sample Packs and hosts the ‘midierror meets…’ interview series speaking with all kinds of people working in sound & music.
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