Arca announces new album KicK iii, shares “Electra Rex”
She will share another new project along with her previously announced album KICK ii on December 3.
In early October, Arca announced a new project called KICK ii. Since then we've heard the songs "Born Yesterday" featuring Sia, "Prada" and "Rakata" from the project, out on December 3. That same day, Arca will release another completely separate new album, KicK iii.
Its lead single "Electra Rex" is out today, and you can hear it in the music video above. The visual, co-directed by Arca and Barcelona-based artist Carlota Guerrero, is a lo-fi flash mob of sorts starring Arca and a number of her friends who turn a city's streets into their own personal ballroom. Their moves are soundtracked by an intense electronic composition where every element is razor-sharp and layered like the teeth of a great white shark.
In a press statement, Arca called KicK iii "the most incendiary entry in the kick universe."
The album is a portal directly into the more manic, violently euphoric and aggressively psychedelic sound palettes in the series. Electra Rex is a new archetype I propose in reference to commonly understood ideas of Freud regarding the oedipal complex- Oedipus Rex kills the father and unknowingly making love to the mother. Electra complex posits the binary opposite: killing the mother and unknowingly making love to the father. And so I am the first to propose a nonbinary psychosexual narrative to avoid falling into the same generational tragic blind spots. Electra Rex, a merging of both names, an integration of both Oedipus Rex and Electra: Electra Rex it kills both parents and has sex with itself, and chooses to live.
Both KICK ii and KicK iii are out December 3 via XL Recordings.
Thumbnail photo by Unax LaFuente