Experimental icon Arca brings a new stirring audiovisual experience with “Nonbinary.” In the new music video, she appears as a butterfly laden bon vivant, a pregnant woman with animatronic nurses, and the goddess Venus within her clamshell. Addressing sex and gender issues quite bluntly, the sparse electronic song contains provocative lyrics such as “It’s French tips wrapped around a dick / Do you want a taste?” The vocals are delivered in a confrontational rapping style that matches the amelodic electronics. At the end of the video, we see two versions of Arca arguing with one another with flames rising all around them. This striking image paints a picture of the conflict between masculinity and femininity that many nonbinary people face. This is particularly notable given the dearth of music that addresses nonbinary identity. As always with Arca, it will be exciting to see what is next to come from her.
Tag: experimental
Caterina Barbieri – “Clessidra”
Italian synth artist Caterina Barbieri returns after her amazing 2019 record Ecstatic Computation with “Clessidra,” a generous contribution to Enisslab’s WorldWideWindow compilation. WorldWideWindow is a 56 track benefit album for Red Cross’s COVID-19 response work. It is a concept album where artists were encouraged to release a song they felt was relevant to the crisis, along with a picture of a window in their quarantine space.
Barbieri’s addition to the compilation is the 14 minute “Clessidra,” which means ‘hourglass’ in Italian. Within it you can hear sequencer loops possibly inspired by the maddening repetition of being in quarantine, where it feels like the sands of time are slipping away. It spends much of it’s time with an ostinato in 9/4. The quarter notes of the ostinato are placed in such a way that it would make perfect sense to have written it as two normal bars of 4/4, but there is an extra note placed in there to make things feel as if each repetition is dragging on just a bit too long. After this has cycled on for some time, things begin to liven up a bit with more melodic lines overlaid to bring a great deal more rhythmic diversity.
In the style of minimalist composers, lines phase in and out of sync with each other, creating much more complexity than just the sum of its parts. I’d like to think this symbolizes a kind of hope, where the repetitiveness of the quarantine phases into a more liberating experience as relationships begin to rebuild themselves into something new. Regardless of how you interpret it, “Clessidra” (and much of Barbieri’s other work) provides a mesmerizing experience that certainly helps spin the hourglass when we are flooded with such a great deal of emptied time. It is exciting to see artists who are able to both speak to the current crisis and support aid movements at the same time all from within the confines of their own home.
You can buy Enisslab’s WorldWideWindow benefit album here.
Freeing Music 