Review: Sudan Archives finds her pulse in The BPM

Intense and alive, Sudan Archives’ The BPM takes her audience out of their bedroom and into the club. 

31-year-old Brittney Parks dropped her third studio album this past Friday after releasing six singles, four music videos and over 20 tour dates over the course of 2025. Three years after the release of her sophomore album Natural Brown Prom Queen, the Cincinnati-born violinist, producer and singer-songwriter embraces electronic and experimental sounds built for the dance floor.

Don’t let the genre label “dance” be deceiving. This album isn’t made for busy downtown clubs that favor 2000s mainstream pop, but for even sweatier, more dimly lit spaces where wild dancing takes priority over flirting and drink ordering. Fervent synths and percussion buoy almost all 15 tracks, only relenting for brief moments to simmer into the next track or build up to a climax.

While The BPM remains truly original, it is not without its influences. Parks produced parts of the album in her parents’ home states of Illinois and Michigan, referencing house and techno from their birthplaces in Chicago and Detroit. Producer Ben Dickey and twin sister Catherine Parks aided in creating the album’s layered soundscape and lyrics.

The opener, “DEAD,” begins with long, melancholic strokes of Parks’ violin, establishing the instrument as a main character in the album’s diverse cast of sounds. Parks asks, “Did you miss me?” as the track crescendos into a heavy, drum-and-bass-filled introduction to her latest concept. The following tracks, “COME AND FIND YOU” and “YEA YEA YEA,” mirror the confident lyricism of the opener while incorporating African drum rhythms and futuristic distortions of Parks’ voice.

The album’s emphasis on electronic sounds and digitally relevant lyrics not only captures this technologically uncertain period of time, but critiques it. Parks’ alter ego on the cover, named “Gadget Girl,” embodies the ultramodern concept behind the album. Meanwhile, lyrics like “I can be everything you need but / can you see past the machines?” in “A COMPUTER LOVE” invokes a deeper sentiment toward the world at large. The album’s sci-fi sound and aesthetic clutches onto the aspects of technology that help humans expand upon themselves.

Despite the overall excellence of The BPM, one track, “MS. PAC MAN,” distinguishes itself as the most overtly sexual and jarring song on the album. Its lyrics are blatantly horny, and the instrumentals are aggressive enough to scare the average puritan or small child. It raises the question of whether she made the song just for laughs.

“Round one, nonstop, first class, fat ass,” she sings in the track.

The album’s final two songs, “NOIRE” and “HEAVEN KNOWS,” stand out among the other 13 tracks. In “NOIRE,” Parks’ violin replicated the backtrack of a horror film, which actually complements the song’s haunting and hypnotic nature. The October release date makes “NOIRE” a Halloween track fit for 2025. The closer, “HEAVEN KNOWS,” possesses the best and most catchy lyrics on the album and serves as a relaxed exit from the frenzy of the last 48 minutes.

As the third volume in the Sudan Archives saga, it is her most unique and powerful album yet. The BPM beats to a pulse of its own. 

5 beats per minute out of 5