Madre (EP)

Alexandra Ghersi, also known as Arca, wrote "Madre" years ago. She worked on the song for nine days, "playing very softly against it over and over in improvised strokes until a harmony and rhythm started to present itself, like a ghost orchestra at the back of a cathedral, barely raising above a whisper but also enveloping in terms of space and density."[2] She played the cello for "Madreviolo" and destroyed the instrument immediately after, because "it had to be like a one-time thing for the version where I pitched up my vocal to castrati registers." She then brought on Oliver Coates to create an arrangement of the unprocessed a cappella version. Arca said that "with Oliver there was an insane resonance and chemistry; where he took it felt like the place I dreamed of but couldn’t reach without him."[3]

Reviewing the first track, Isabelia Herrera of Pitchfork said "on the first track of her new maxi-single, cellist Oliver Coates’ strings bloom into doleful tendrils and Arca’s forlorn vocals curl into a delicate aria. But a closer listen reveals something far from the orchestral: the sense of capacious longing so central to boleros, tonadas, and other styles of Latin American folk music."[4]

All tracks written and produced by Alejandra Ghersi, except for "Madre", co-written by Ghersi and Oliver Coates.[1]