Venezuelan producer Arca has announced his new album Mutant, the follow-up to last year's Xen.Arcas 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 At times anxiously self-reflexive, at others beauteous and calm, it was intermittently personal and withdrawn.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 Arcas Xen saw him grace the cover of FADER Magazine and be placed at #3 in Dazeds inaugural Dazed 100, their definitive run-down of the pioneers shaking style and culture. Arca was also included in Forbes Magazines 30 Under 30: The Next Generation Of Music Stars list alongside Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith, HAIM and A$AP Rocky.
