Wench is a duo by Arca - who needs no introduction - and Shayne Oliver, who shouldn't need one either but here it goes anyway: founder of Hood by Air, occassional musician as LEECH or Anonymous Club, as well as generally OG of what was later labelled "deconstructed club", influencing a whole generation of experimental DJs with his sets at GHE20GOTH1K (where Arca would get introduced to club culture in the early 2010s and decide to do an internship, which lead to this project - see interview excerpt below).

their debut "Greatest Hits '88-'16 Disc 1" was released exclusively on NTS Radio in 2022, a collection of extremely h**** and weird ballroom type club songs. imo up there with Arca's very best tapes and a big treat for ppl who always wished for more hip-hop inspired production in vein with Stretch and &&&&&

the very first time they worked together was on a 15min mix for HBA SS16, which they later dubbed HBA GALVANIZE and paired w an extremely trippy visualizer by Jesse Kanda. essential

they did an interview w Dazed in 2016, where they first revealed the existence of an album, recorded 2012-2013... it's unclear why they ultimately waited almost 10 years to release it.

Tell me about your first experience of GHE20G0TH1K.
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Arca: I was really into anime, and I saw one of their flyers with an anime character on. I couldn’t even drink yet legally, I just showed up. It was my first real nightlife experience in New York. The energy of the people coming in was so shocking to me. Instead of hiding the fact that they were outsiders, which is what I was used to doing, they were celebrating it. I didn’t have a reason to approach Shayne. We had to find an internship at college and I had a really cool teacher who would just let you do whatever. I thought, ‘I want an internship at GHE20G0TH1K.’
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Shayne Oliver: He was the worst intern ever, because he didn’t want to intern! I would ask him do all the stuff that interns do – just compiling my folders...
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Arca: ...and I was the worst intern ever. (laughs)
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Oh my God! Did you fire him?
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Shayne Oliver: No, because it became something else. By that time (he was like), ‘OK, obviously I’m not an intern. But I can do music for you if you like.’

arca is back

apparently there was an event in Paris today at which they premiered new music, they created an insta to post the teaser and it got posted on PAN's page as well..... def looking like it's release time bby
instagram.com/wweenncchh

they were teasing a Disc 2 of Greatest Hits including a tracklist in conjunction with the release of Disc 1... let's see if that's what this is

one of the songs from that tracklist is already out, with a very kinky music video

Extremely in for anything arca related

lowkey best Arca project too

Damn i need to check this out ASAP

IN.

@op you got more on deconstructed club, never heard of it before

had no idea HBA dude made music

in

the "new music" was actually mostly Disc 1 material remixed with some new material teased, as a soundtrack for a new Ottolinger collection in Paris

not much for now but them creating a new instagram page and being managed by PAN is def teasing a proper drop soon I'd say

new ID at the end cuts out immediately, there are some clips of it

rateyourmusic.com/genre/deconstructed-club
(a lot of rym genre write-ups are rly excellent tbh)

also good longer quote from Arca's 2015 Pitchfork interview for Mutant

Pitchfork: It seems like there's a new aesthetic being developed by artists like you, Lotic, Rabit, Elysia Crampton, and Total Freedom that's heavy on stretched and plasticized sounds, explosions, breaking glass. Most of the artists affiliated with this sound are also queer. Do you think that's a coincidence, or is there a conscious attempt to create a new, experimental queer aesthetic in electronic music?
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A: I attribute that explosive cacophony—that soul-baring quality—to Total Freedom and Shayne Oliver and Venus X’s GHE20G0TH1K parties in New York, which was the complete birthplace for that style. I always call Shayne my gay mother. When I moved from Venezuela to New York when I was 17 and went to that party—it was like a modular synth patching all this energy into a route that could be catalyzed and harmonized and amplified. Meeting all these individuals who were so free and comfortable with themselves was an important part of my musical journey. I remember going alone for my first GHE20G0TH1K. It was in some basement, the cover was like $3, and I was there too early because I was really nerdy. I was blown the f*** away. They were playing, like, slowed down hardstyle with a Rihanna a capella over it. It was about exploding highbrow and lowbrow.
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Shayne was playing the CDJs like an instrument. He was using cue points and cutting up the tracks and using it like a drum machine before anyone ever did that. Shayne invented a style of DJing that was so confrontational and aggressive and euphoric, like clashing up an industrial song with a Three 6 Mafia track. This completely punk energy—Shayne is the king of that.
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And then Total Freedom is the king of painting through chaos. He pioneered a way of saying something really quiet in the middle of a thunderstorm. He's exploding people's eardrums, and what comes after that is sweet and tender. One of the most magical moments I've had in a club was when he played glass crashing for five minutes. Everyone stopped dancing. And then he played a YouTube rip of Beyoncé singing the national anthem, drowning the whole room in echo. Everyone lost their minds. It was so insanely free. That was a miracle to witness. That's why he's so magical to me. Just being himself, Total Freedom taught me a whole vocabulary of chaos.

one of Arca's finest moments imo is this hybrid live/DJ pandemic livestream in Ibiza where she's joined by ghe20goth1k OGs physical therapy and total freedom b2b'ing while she improvises electronics and vocals. legendary s***

video by weirdcore who's behind aphex' crazy tour visuals too

in