Dance music is in Sudan Archives’ blood. The singer and violinist’s father is from Chicago, the birthplace of house music in the early 1980s. Meanwhile, her mother is from Detroit, where techno music developed around the same time. She grew up between the two cities, in Cincinnati, making regular trips to visit family in both.
But Sudan, whose real name is Brittney Parks, didn’t initially set out to pay tribute to her heritage when she made her new album, “The BPM” (out Oct. 17). She just wanted to make songs that were fast. The Midwestern musical history came out naturally.
“I know what techno and house is, but I’m not ever, like, referencing anything,” says Parks during a video interview from her sunny home in Los Angeles. “I’m literally opening the computer and I’m putting that BPM [beats per minute] on 120 and I’m creating drums and I’m creating violins.”
Parks’ music gained recognition for bridging folk and classical violin with contemporary R&B and pop. (Her stage name is partially a tribute to the Sudanese fiddle music that inspired her as a Black violinist.) In 2022, her second album, the futuristic coming-of-age “Natural Brown Prom Queen,” was named “Best New Music” by Pitchfork and made the New York Times’ list of the year’s best albums. Since then, she’s performed on one of the main stages at Lollapalooza in 2023 and, earlier this summer, headlined Millennium Park.
Over the past few years, Parks had been feeling restless during her shows. The songs she was playing couldn’t give her the release she wanted as a performer.
“I need[ed] some upbeat s—,” she says. “I’m trying to be on stage and break a sweat, because I have all this energy, and I wanna get it out.”
So, when Parks started working on new music, she focused on the speed — hence the title of “The BPM.” If a producer sent her two options for a beat, she forced herself to choose the faster one.
“[It] would be not about, like, if I like it or not,” she says. “It would be like, ‘Does it make me move?’”
She also emphasized technology, embodying the techie alter ego of “Gadget Girl” on the songs. Parks has always been fascinated with technology — another credit to her father, who “always had the new phone.” As Gadget Girl, she added more effects to her vocals than ever before, auto-tuning it and pitching it down, like on the glitched-out “Computer Love.”
But, whether Parks knew it consciously, the album needed Detroit and Chicago. On a trip to visit family in Detroit, Parks decided to try collaborating with her cousin’s husband, Eric Terhune — a producer who’d worked with Detroit rappers like Sada Baby and Baby Smoove. She also invited her twin sister, Catherine Parks, and her cousin (Terhune’s wife), Taylor Henderson, into the writing and recording process. Working with them in Detroit brought an authenticity to the music.
“I feel like the house and techno just come out of us,” Parks says.
A trip to Chicago was “the sprinkle on top” of the process. A friend had told Parks about D-Composed, a Black string ensemble in Chicago, and recommended them if she ever wanted group strings for her music. As “The BPM” took shape, Parks felt like she needed extra players to bolster her violin playing against the electronic production. Not to mention that the city was just a drive away from Detroit.
“I’m always playing these damn parts by my damn self, and layering and layering,” Parks says. “And I feel like there’s just so much you can do as one voice, as a violinist. It’s nice to have the extra voices.”
So Parks set up a session at a West Side studio with a quartet of D-Composed musicians: violinists Anya Brumfield and Caitlin Edwards, violist Wilfred Farquharson and cellist Tahirah Whittington. Local experimental composer Ben Zucker had already arranged the parts for Parks, so the quartet was able to record everything in just one day, contributing to more than half the album.
At one point, Parks showed the quartet how to hit the strings of their instruments to make a percussive sound. Many classical violin techniques are named after their creators, like the Heifetz slide, so they decided to name this the “Sudan flick.”
“She had a lot more creativity than those of us that have had to stare at sheet music for years,” says Brumfield. “Then there were also some times where we were playing and she was like, ‘Hey, can you show me how you did that?’ It was just string players nerding out, honestly, and being in awe of each other.”
It’s fitting that the album’s strings came together in Chicago, since soulful string samples are a cornerstone of Chicago house music. Likewise, Terhune augmented the drum tracks in Detroit, where techno is defined by four-on-the-floor beats.
But it wasn’t always so clear-cut — the album’s most classic house track, “A Bug’s Life,” came to life in Detroit. Initially, Parks composed it on violin, without the central pounding piano line. Then, during a session, she started singing some over-the-top, diva-ish belts over the song as a joke.
“Everyone’s getting weak, laughing at me,” she says. “And then, they were like, ‘You should actually do that.’ Then when I did it, it sounded crazy, and I was like, ‘Yeah, Imma give that to Ben [Dickey, the producer] and tell him to chop it up.”
Parks is already preparing to tour behind “The BPM,” including a show at Thalia Hall on Feb. 5. She’s working on a video wall she can interact with during the shows, as another Gadget Girl touch.
Afterward, Parks is unsure if she’ll continue to make dance music, preferring to stay unpredictable. What she will take from this era is the assurance of pulling off such a major pivot. The mark of a great house singer, after all, is confidence.
“Like, I’m 31 now,” Parks says. “This is the album that I’m in my 30s. I know what I want and I know how to work it.”