Arca: &&&&& [PAN]

Why you'll love it

This PAN edition is remastered and pressed on one side, with an etching on the other. Pitchfork gave the reissue 8.4, and the mixtape is the record that led to Arca's work with Björk on Vulnicura.

This edition

• Remastered
• Single-sided
• Etched B-side

About the album

Before she was producing for Kanye West, FKA twigs and Björk, Alejandra Ghersi put out a 25-minute mixtape through Hippos in Tanks and SoundCloud in July 2013. The Venezuelan producer, now based in Barcelona, had already turned heads with the Stretch EPs, and &&&&& pushed further: 14 pieces running together as one continuous track, with Jesse Kanda's unsettling artwork to match. A 500-copy vinyl run followed in 2014, and in September 2020 PAN reissued it and put it on mainstream streaming services for the first time.

Stereogum called it even darker and denser than the Stretch EPs, and it's a heady trip through dub, hip hop, grime, ambient, trap and glitch, with beats that warp, stall and lurch back to life. "Knot" opens with clattering menace and returned as a single for the reissue, "Feminine" and "Hallucinogen" melt into slow, woozy pulses, and "Obelisk" brings the whole thing to a monumental close.

The reissue made No. 19 on the UK Independent Album Breakers chart. The title is five ampersands, which makes it the hardest record in the shop to ask for out loud; pointing works fine.

Also at Kops: more Arca on vinyl · browse Electronic

Tracklist

Listen

On PAN (cat# PAN 100 LP), a reissue of the 2013 mixtape.