Within Arca’s catalogue is a rich tradition of projects with enigmatic, five-character titles, from her groundbreaking debut mixtape, 2013’s &&&&&, to 2020’s @@@@@, an hour-long collage presented as a single track. The Venezuelan musician carries on the custom with XXXXX, her first full-length release since 2021’s kiCK iiiii, the final installment of her sprawling Kick series. After premiering the album in full via a two-hour Diva.Experimental broadcast staged live from an abandoned factory in Barcelona, XXXXX arrives as a slippery expansion of the producer’s world-building project, pushing the limits of selfhood and sound. Here her shape-shifting songs mostly stray from the club-friendly reggaetón of the earlier Kick installments and venture into darker, more disorienting territory, toying with harsh noise, metallic textures and rhythms borrowed from an alternate dimension while probing XXXXX-rated themes on red-blooded tracks like “Fxck”.