June: 18 albums you need to hear this month

Arca 'Arca' (XL Recordings)

Arca’s albums are marked by transformations. From the wordless epics of a genderless humanoid on 2014’s ‘Xen’ to the crushing glitch-and-stretch of 2015’s ‘Mutant’, there’s been a core element of fluidity in Alejandro Ghersi’s stylistic fusion of EDM, bass, chamber music and hip hop. Here, the Venezuelan-born artist emerges from this veil of dark abstraction to reveal a very human core. A bilingual album by a bilingual artist, it opens with the slurping sound of Ghersi’s own saliva, as he sings in the Spanish-titled ‘Piel’. Translating to ‘skin’ in English, its urgent, high-pitched signal follows the melancholy first-take of the artist’s vocal, who’s sung before but never with such vulnerability. It marks the start of a soaring new direction. Steph Kretowicz

8/10