Sudan Archives
★★★★
The BPM
STONES THROW. CD/DL/LP
Singer, rapper and violinist looks to the future on head-spinning third.
Having previously adopted the persona of a classical goddess for 2019 debut Athena and returned to her Cincinnati high school years for the experimental R&B of 2022’s Natural Brown Prom Queen, The BPM finds singer, rapper and violinist Brittney Parks inhabiting the character of ‘Gadget Girl’ – a technologically augmented musician exploring the power of rhythm and self-will. While the concept means Parks’ violin takes a backseat, it makes for a dizzying, future-facing hybrid of dancefloor sounds. High-tempo Jersey club, EDM, hyper pop, trap, Chicago house and more hurtle past as if Parks is feeding them into a large hadron collider, her avant-garde verve on the likes of A Computer Love’s cacophonous glitch storm and Ms Pac Man’s tongue-in-cheek profanity creating entirely new forms in the process.