One of the most generous and consistently mindblowing artists of the 21st century, Arca always sparks excitement with any new material she offers. After a pronounced three-year drought of releases, »@@@@@« (or »Arroba«) was therefore particularly thrilling to get around our ears, the first taste of her artistic reinvention following transition. Initially dubbed as a single containing over an hour of quantum states, this mixtape foreshadowed the constant flux of styles and sounds that would pour out of her (arguably now modern classic) »Kick« quintet album cycle, the beginning of a musical epic that catapulted Arca into the mainstream she had been influencing all along.

After pausing and gestating the reignition of her music career, Arca clearly hadn't lost the knack for her torrid, emotionally fraught take on electronics. Her already deconstructed club style, pulling from techno, gabber, and reggaeton, is even further stripped for parts here, the sonics twisted up into strange new shapes recalling the feeling of hearing Arca’s breakout releases »Xen« and »Mutant« for the first time, which jump out in self-sampled, surprising new angles. These are contrasted with evolutions on the future-ballad style of her acclaimed eponymous 2017 record; a particularly poignant midsection channels old friend FKA twigs, who later used the heavy piano sparkles of »Phantasy« in her own trap ballad »tears in the club«. »@@@@@« is also interspersed with passages of writhing noise, hissing ambience, and choral mechanics which build on the sombre beauty of Arvo Pärt. Taken altogether, it makes »@@@@@« the sort of trip that, for all her imitators, only Arca is capable of producing.