搬運自：網(wǎng)易云音樂專欄【All About Music】（在原文基礎(chǔ)上添加了英語原文與排版調(diào)整）

翻譯：Bromantique_Victime

The more Alejandro Ghersi gives of himself, the larger his music as Arca grows. His latest feels both intimate and expansive, a connection between his melodic past and a?chaotic future.

Alejandro Ghersi在探索自身這一層面上付出的越多，他作為Arca創(chuàng)作出的音樂就越龐大。他的最新作品給人既親切、私密而又寬闊，是聯(lián)結(jié)他旋律性的過去和混亂未來的繩索。

This album began long before Alejandro Ghersi became?Arca. In the nascent stages of his career, Ghersi made?dreamy synth pop songs?as a teenager in Venezuela under the name?Nuuro. These love sketches, sung in Spanish and English, showcased an upbeat singing voice and brightly colored electronic landscapes redolent of?Postal Service?or?Passion Pit. What he did as?Nuuro?and what he now does as Arca couldn’t seem any more different. Arca’s sound is one of chaos and contortions, further defined by?the unsettling visuals of morphing bodies suspended in space he made with longtime collaborator Jesse Kanda. But when Ghersi debuted his newfound (or perhaps rediscovered) singing voice on?Arca, it felt like a wormhole opened up—one that connected his prehistoric past to his visions of the distant future.

這張專輯在Alejandro Ghersi成為“Arca”的很久之前就開始投入制作了。在他職業(yè)生涯的開始階段，Ghersi在委內(nèi)瑞拉以Nuuro的名字創(chuàng)作著夢幻般的合成器流行樂曲。這些用西班牙語或英語演繹的愛情小品，揭示了一個有著歡快樂聲和艷麗色彩的電子景觀，讓人不禁聯(lián)想到The Postal Service或Passion Pit。而他作為Nuuro所做的和他如今作為Arca所做的，似乎并沒有什么不同。Arca的聲音混亂而扭曲，Arca的形象也漸漸地在他和長期合作伙伴Jesse Kanda所制作的懸浮在空間中的變異體那令人不安的視覺效果中被進一步定義。但是，當(dāng)Ghersi在《Arca》中首次展示他新探索的（或許是重新獲得的）歌聲時，感覺像是開辟了一個蟲洞——聯(lián)結(jié)了他已成追憶的過去和他對遙遠未來的幻想。

“Piel,” the first song Arca released from this album, felt shockingly new. He hums at first, intimating the cadence of a bedtime lullaby, easing a listener into the song. Then, seconds later, he sings towards the heavens, and acidic?drips?of distortion, bass, and chorus rumble in the background. The melody feels worn and romantic, and his voice slinks along to the beat like an old prayer. Finally, the music dissolves into a puddle of oozing beats and jumbled clanks. When you listen to “Piel,” there is no question you’re hearing an Arca song. And when you go searching for the answer to why that is, you keep digging into Ghersi’s timeline, trying to figure out how he could make something that feels so ancient and so otherworldly.

“Piel”，Arca在這張專輯中發(fā)布的第一首歌，是令人驚異的新。最一開始他在哼唱，伴隨著搖籃曲一般的致眠節(jié)奏，讓聽眾輕松地融入歌曲的氛圍。幾秒鐘后，他便開始向著天堂吟唱，背景里充斥著迷幻的失真、低音以及和聲的嗡鳴。旋律破敗卻浪漫，他的聲音像一個古老的祈禱者一樣隨著節(jié)拍滑行。最后，音樂溶作一灘滲出的節(jié)拍和雜亂的滴答聲。當(dāng)你聆聽“Piel”時，毫無疑問，你會知道這就是Arca的歌。而當(dāng)你要去尋找為何如此輕易地得到答案時，你便會不停地挖掘Ghersi的時間線，試圖弄清楚他是如何做出聽起來如此古老（像是已經(jīng)存在了很久很久）同時卻又如此與眾不同的東西的。

The 13-songs on?Arca?don’t represent an about-face for?Ghersi,?or even a reinvention. Rather, it imagines what would happen if he intermingled the music of his past (the pop songs he made, the Schumann and Mendelssohn he studied) with the radical noise and boundary-shattering pop he’s invented as Arca. Booming organs, mournful pianos, and classical instrumentation share space with a kaleidoscope of outré production. This juxtaposition is made even more clear by his voice, which proudly wears all of its imperfections: every?cough,?wheeze,?and difficult breath is captured. That he’s using his voice at all is, for Ghersi, an act of time-travelling in itself. He says that his relationship with his voice on this album felt like “communing with [his] teenage self again.” He combines paradoxes and contradictions to create an experience that doesn’t feel like it’s part of our space-time continuum, but a separate universe he’s making on the fly

《Arca》中的13首歌曲并不代表著Ghersi的轉(zhuǎn)變，甚至也不代表什么重塑。相反，想一想，如果他把他過去的音樂（他曾制作的流行歌曲，他所效仿學(xué)習(xí)的舒曼和門德爾松）與他作為Arca發(fā)明的激進噪音和打破邊界的流行音樂混合起來會發(fā)生什么，《Arca》便是答案。轟鳴的風(fēng)琴、哀傷的鋼琴和其他古典樂器與萬花筒式的離奇制作共享同一個空間。他的聲音使這種并置愈加明晰，它驕傲地裝飾上所有的不完美：每一聲咳嗽、喘息和艱難的呼吸都被捕捉到。對Ghersi來說，他使用自己的聲音本身就是一種穿越時空的行為。他說，在這張專輯中，他與他的聲音的關(guān)系感覺就像“再次與[他]十幾歲的自己交流”。他把悖論和矛盾結(jié)合起來，創(chuàng)造出一種全新的體驗，甚至感覺這并非我們所處的時空連續(xù)體的一部分，而是他在翱翔中創(chuàng)造出的一個獨立的宇宙。

The discoveries Ghersi makes on?Arca?allow him to write his most relaxed and intimate songs. His work is still mysterious, but not as opaque—it doesn’t keep you at an arm’s length,?instead?he offers up his pleasures more readily. Take for example the three-song sequence of “Coraje,” “Whip,” and “Desafío.” “Coraje,” is the album’s simplest song—Ghersi’s take on the piano ballad. The keys plink away as Ghersi searches for notes high and low. He even sounds like he’s crying at one point—moaning and whispering—his delivery becoming more watery as he reaches the finale. Seconds later, on “Whip,” he rips you from this emotional moment with a minute-and-a-half long track that’s mostly just the sound of a bullwhip rapidly moving back and forth. Then, on “Desafío,” he channels all the pop music he’s written for?Kanye,?FKA twigs,?Bj?rk,?Kelela, and others into a single point. It’s warm, impossibly catchy, but densely detailed. It begins with the sound of an air raid siren, but then it cracks open, and Arca unleashes this joyous synth melody and airy drums. He sounds at ease, dancing between notes as he talks about the touch of lover feeling like the kiss of death (“Tócame de?primera?vez/Mátame?una?y?otra?vez”—“Touch?me?first time/Kill me again and again”). It’s as close to a straightforward pop song Ghersi might write under the name Arca, and it’s outstanding.

Ghersi在《Arca》中的發(fā)現(xiàn)使他能夠?qū)懗鏊罘潘珊妥钣H切的歌曲。他的作品依舊神秘，但不再那么不透明、難以捉摸——它不會與你保持距離，相反，他隨意地分享著他的樂趣。以“Coraje”、“Whip”和“Desafío”這三首歌的曲序為例。“Coraje”是專輯中最簡單的歌曲——Ghersi選擇用鋼琴芭樂來呈現(xiàn)。Ghersi在高處和低處尋覓著音符，琴鍵則叮咚作響。他甚至在某一時刻聽起來像在哭泣——呻吟或是低語——當(dāng)他的聲音來到尾聲，表達變得更加含蓄。幾秒鐘后，便到了“Whip”，他用一個長達一分半鐘的曲目將你從原先的情感中剝離出來，這個曲目主要就是一個鞭子快速地來回抽動的聲音。然后，在“Desafío”中，他把他為Kanye、FKA twigs、Bj?rk、Kelela和等等其他人寫的所有流行音樂都集中同一個點上。它溫暖、不易上口，卻又充斥著龐雜密集的細節(jié)。它以空襲警報的聲音開始，隨后崩裂開，釋放出歡樂的合成器旋律和空氣中的鼓聲。他讓一切聽起來很輕松，像在音符之間跳舞，他還談到情人的觸摸感覺就像一次死亡之吻（“Tócame de?primera?vez/Mátame?una?y?otra?vez”、“僅僅是第一次的觸碰/便將我一次又一次置于死地”）。這可能是Ghersi以Arca的名義寫的最接近于真正流行歌曲的作品，而且非常出色。

Throughout?Arca, Ghersi strings together moments like these, finding beauty in contrast. And it’s not just because there is something dazzling about how different each moment feels from one to the next. There’s something legible, more direct about all of this. Hearing him castigate a lover on “Fugaces” (“?Por qué me?mentiste?”—“Why did you lie to me?”) or just saying something as simple as “I miss you” on “Anoche,” is something Ghersi hasn’t done before. Some of these songs sound like they were delivered as if he was right there in the room with you. Even if he claims many of the lyrics were improvised, there is still a strong intention—he’s reaching out and offering his hand. This close-quarters proximity gives these songs a pulse, a warm human heartbeat that seemed buried in all the noise of his older songs.

在整張專輯中，Ghersi將像這樣的時刻串聯(lián)起來，在交相輝映中發(fā)掘美的存在。這不僅僅是因為每一時刻給人的感覺都有一些令人眼花繚亂的地方。而是，所有這些都共有著一些可識別的、更直接的東西。聽他在“Fugaces”中譴責(zé)一個情人（“?Por qué me?mentiste?”——“你為什么對我撒謊？”）或只是在“Anoche”中說一些像“I miss you”這樣簡單的情話，這是Ghersi過去從未做過的。這些歌曲中的一部分聽起來就像他在房間里和傾訴你的小秘密一樣。即使他聲稱許多歌詞是即興創(chuàng)作的，但確有著一個強烈的意圖——他正交付著他的雙手。這種近距離的接近給了這些歌曲一絲脈動，一些溫度，像是有了人類心跳，而這似乎也曾被埋沒在他的過去作品的所有噪音中。

Ghersi recently revealed that he chose the name Arca because it was an old Spanish word for a “ceremonial container.”?Arcas?are “empty spaces” that can be filled with meaning. He has never been one to believe in anything as concrete as identity or category, but there is a sense on?Arca?that he’s looking back at what he’s done in order to reach something else altogether—he’s filling up his box with all the best possible versions of himself: past, present, and future. It’s all for the sake of imagining?a world?better than the here and now.

Ghersi最近透露說，他之所以選擇Arca這個名字，是因為它是一個古老的西班牙語單詞，意為“ceremonial container”。而“Arca們”則意旨“empty spaces”，需要“意義”來填充其中。他從不相信任何像身份或類別那樣具體的東西，但在Arca上有一種感覺，他正在回顧他所做的事情，以達到另一種共同的目的——他正在用所有可能的最佳版本的自己填充他的空間：過去、現(xiàn)在和未來。這都是為了想象中的那一個比如今更美好的世界。