EUSEXUA is FKA twigs bizarre world-building masterclass

This “bliss” is unlike any other. According to her, we can redeem its most exact sense by using the term “eusexua” that she coined while filming in Prague three years ago, with dance music and culture’s tremendous help. It encompasses propitious feelings born out of sexuality and – to add from her hypnotising performances for Valentino and On – honest desperation to feel a connection. In some way, physicality is naturally embedded into it: bodies doing freestyle choreographies in a hazy, brutalist warehouse, techno beats consuming every sound that dares to compete against them. On the titular record, that very sense paints a similar setting (see the music videos for this era so far) in which her vocal and musical power meet their most emotive selves.

As she remarked in a recent interview, EUSEXUA isn’t a bona fide dance album but rather a “love letter” to the genre that has reframed her thinking. The pulpish slashes and abrupt reverses on its spectacular high point “Drums of Death” and the head-spinning climax on “Striptease” may sound like extreme yearnings. Yet, the transformative music takes pride in externalising them and granting a concrete form that we can use as a mode of cathartic release. This is a fresh resolution for her music career. “Perfect Stranger” and “24hr Dog” reek of hopeless impulses sprung from the festering need for human contact, but they don’t develop like her past works. The hysterical pleasures overrule them, sustained by dance and techno’s gratifying template.

Twigs continues to emphasise more on how words sound and less on what they mean. Her lively 2022 mixtape CAPRISONGS was the starting point, on which “meta angel”, “jealousy”, and many more wring out syllables like clothes soaked in luxurious detergent water. Where words were cherry-picked to bring forth an irresistible manifesto of female power on 2019's MAGDALENE, they’ve transmuted into well-articulated carriers of limpid emotion on EUSEXUA – a pivot from complex syntax. Succinct instructions like “Turn your love up loud to keep the devil down” on “Girl Feels Good” and “Work me to satisfy the core of your mind” on “24hr Dog” dominate the lyrics while their orgasmic melodies take over as the singular showcase for twigs’ unique songwriting.

They sometimes leave an uncatered desire for more lyrical depth. In several cases, however, the electrifying music makes up for what’s unfulfilled. For the first time, Koreless takes up the role of EUSEXUA’s primary producer. He casts an eerie mist over every song, a motif that mostly clears towards the end of each piece where all kinds of beats collide and generate a more liberating version of themselves. On “Sticky”, twigs gives in to bodily pleasures, evading “overcomplicated moments”, then snappy, lightning-struck synths plummet down as an escape route. “Room of Fools” delivers a dreamlike transcendence led by her majestic voice after clashes of Björk-esque stems. Koreless’s outstanding lead in the production undeniably shapes much of EUSEXUA’s deliciously bizarre identity.

The vocal contribution from Eartheater on the title track, the ear-catching twists and turns from Stargate on “Perfect Stranger”, and the darker tunes from Ojivolta all make an unrivalled masterclass on world-building. Even the cranky shockwaves, like “Childlike Things”, lurch forth without alienating what’s already established. But EUSEXUA tumbles down into an undesirable hole at the last minute. When putting the healing message aside, “Wanderlust” is amongst her weakest closers for its more predictable structure; after many wild switch-ups and uses of left-field imagery, placing it as the finale feels like an unnerving undoing of their function. It may be a wake-up call to festering reality. All seismic pleasures must meet their end, after all, and what else can we do except relive them by clicking rewind?