Sudan Archives – The BPM
Brittney Parks is all the ensemble she’s ever needed. The Los Angeles artist, better known as Sudan Archives, built her sound from the ground up on her 2017 self-titled EP, using the sparse foundation of voice and violin to stack layers of loops on top of each other into something greater than the sum of its parts. Her ambition as Sudan Archives has long since eclipsed those early one-girl band performances into richer sounds and fuller arrangements, but it’s been guided by her own vision and sense of self. “I was never the girl in a band in high school—I could only express myself for the first time when I got my first iPad and started making beats on it, and when I got my first electric violin,” she said in a statement. “I’m all gadget girled out now, but I’ve never felt so free as a human.”
On her third album, The BPM, Parks steps into the role of that persona to which she alluded, Gadget Girl, a kind of cybernetically enhanced musical virtuoso—which isn’t too far from her own experience, just substitute loopers and samplers for her robotic enhancements. Much as The BPM is about the electronic pulse that drives her music, though, it’s likewise aligned with the affirmations and statements of self-love on 2022’s Natural Brown Prom Queen—an autobiographical journey of sorts through the sounds of her parents’ hometowns, the dance music meccas of Chicago and Detroit. And with some assistance from members of her family and her well-calibrated Gadget Girl instincts, Parks crafts some of the most massive beats to bear her name.
The BPM is both a wide-ranging journey through America’s home-grown electronic sounds—Chicago house, Atlanta bass, Jersey club—as well as one that never leaves its central hub: The club. In that sense, The BPM delivers exactly what it promises in spades, from the juxtaposition of dreamy textures against enormous beats in “TOUCH ME,” the gorgeously maximalist house of “A BUG’S LIFE,” or the steady thump of “THE NATURE OF POWER.” In the triumphant liftoff of opener “DEAD,” juxtaposed with soaring electro-pop verses and some of Parks’ most powerful vocal performances, she offers a straightforward greeting, introducing us to her gallery of rhythmic delights: “Hello, it’s me/Did you miss me?/Just take this piece/The best of me.”
Though The BPM isn’t without its somber and reflective moments, the best of which arrives via Parks’ elegant violin performance in “SHE’S GOT PAIN,” it by and large comprises some of her most purely joyful and fun material. She moves seamlessly between house and trap on early highlight “YEA YEA YEA,” dialing up the sex appeal as she sings, “I hit the floor he got his eyes watching me/I licked my lips, flipped my hair and rolled up some weed.” “MS. PAC MAN” showcases her playful badassery with imagery borrowed from Namco’s chomping icon (“Eating bitches up, kinda scary, we don’t give a fuck“). And few songs I’ve heard this year are as immediately satisfying as the breathless disco funk of “MY TYPE,” whose fluid bassline and lyrical dexterity make for an endlessly replayable confection.
There’s more than a twinge of melancholy tracing the edges of The BPM, Parks having written the album in the aftermath of a breakup, but that sadness is just one shade in a broader palette in which she sought to explore her fullest spectrum as both person and artist. She described the process and the adoption of her Gadget Girl persona as “an excuse to be unapologetically myself, to explore [every side of me]. It’s a special moment in my life.” On the album’s title track, she chants “The BPM is the power,” capturing the album’s sense of catharsis and freedom in as few words as possible. She’s never sounded more in command.
Label: Stones Throw
Year: 2025
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Sudan Archives : The BPM
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