Arca appears like a Jesse Kanda animation come to life in the just-released video for “Reverie,” the latest track from his self-titled next album. In the video, Arca stumbles around a glowing red room on hoof-like mechanical stilts, wearing a white baroque matador jacket as he struggles against a monstrous bull horn, and blood spreads across his bare skin, depicting both sides of the bullfight, as he explains in a statement accompanying the release.
“Bullfighting is a piercing metaphor: you are fighting a bull, and at the same time yourself. You are not the victim or the oppressor, you are both — Animality and bestiality are conflated,” Arca writes. “Evoking sex invokes our animality… And evoking our animality, in turn, invokes spirituality.”
The video was conceived by Arca, who is credited using his real name Alejandro Ghersi, and Jesse Kanda, who also directs. The track shows off Arca’s delicate singing voice, a running theme in the tracks from this new album; it is layered over distorting strings and mechanical noise in Arca’s immediately recognizable production style.
Arca the album is out April 7.
Credits
Text Charlotte Gush