Hikaru Utada and Arca have come together to maximise their joint slay. ‘Electricity,’ previously featured on Utada’s 2024 best-of album SCIENCE FICTION, now has a remix coming from the acclaimed Venezuelan producer and musician.
"It’s a song that’s so full of life and so vibrant and so much about a warmth, a connection that can’t be broken," Arca shares. I wanted to do my best to recontextualize it sonically from the original, which is already so amazing, and try to do something different. In this instance, I wanted to go for something celebrational and to make it as electric as the song title implied – euphoric even."
"It was an honour, and it was really exciting because I didn’t know what to expect. There’s an unmistakable Arca sound, yet she draws from such a beautiful range of music and experiences that you never really know what you’re going to get," Utada adds. "What we got was incredible and beautiful. I’m very happy and excited to have had this opportunity to collaborate with her."
As a solo artist, Arca is known for her Kick quintet of studio albums. A prolific producer, she has worked with other pioneers like Björk, FKA Twigs, and Kelela, and has worked on remixes including Lady Gaga and Ariana Grande's ‘Rain on Me’, Frank Ocean's ‘Little Demon’ and Addison Rae's ‘Arcamarine’.
The latest track in the Japanese American pop icon’s extensive catalogue, 'Electricity' has steadily risen to become a bonafide fan favourite, even featuring as an encore performance at the SCIENCE FICTION Tour 2024. Its music video, conceptualised and art directed by YOSHIROTTEN, has garnered over 1.8 million views as of press time.
In a 2024 interview with Bandwagon, Utada shared that they began writing the song, originally a co-production with Floating Points, at Paris Fashion Week in 2023. “I had a lot of fun. Some of my friends from Tokyo that I hadn't really been out with before – like clubbing and stuff – we went out a lot and had fun,” they recounted. “I met new people and there were new experiences. I just wanted to capture this energy of people's connections.”
Arca’s rework comes on the heels of Karen Nyame KG’s remix, released in the middle of February.
Watch the Arca remix's visualiser here:
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