On a frigid February night in 2017, Arca and a cabal of fashion and nightlife icons strolled into the Lower East Side basement dive bar Home Sweet Home.
An ensemble of art school kids and unsuspecting patrons milled about, while a D.J. played mediocre 2000s hip-hop. Before long, Arca took over the turntables, and anticipation and curiosity percolated through the air.
She plugged in her USB and grinned as she blasted unreleased treasures, filling the room with glitchy electronic shrapnel that would become her devastating self-titled album a few months later.
Only a handful of people in the crowd knew who she was — at the time, she was mostly an experimental electronic producer with a reputation for harnessing industrial dissonance, the high.