Sudan Archives - Athena

The Quietus

No one calls her album Athena if she isn’t trying to convey the strength of women. Brittney Parks makes her strength in her guise of Sudan Archives immediately known. The singer and violinist brings presence and personality to her debut full length album, having carved a unique space for herself over two EPs in as many years. Parks has a knack for writing massive hooks that will dig straight into your brain. But where her EPs stubbornly wrapped tracks of jarring, syncopated beats around those massive tracks, Athena leans more towards R&B, and Parks takes advantage of the space of an LP to smooth out any previous idiosyncrasies.

Parks learned to play violin by ear as a child and her approach to the instrument shows a creativity unburdened by classical constricts. It’s apparent that she has absorbed the potential of the violin and fits it according to the song. Sometimes that means orchestral filler gets tucked under R&B grooves and sometimes the violin stands in for a guitar or ukulele, either played in pizzicato or strummed.

The violin is also the axis her influences turn on. While songs on Sudan Archives’ EPs sometimes ceded ground from the violin to straight electronics, Parks’ instrument of choice is consistent throughout Athena. It’s dominant on songs like ‘Confessions’ – which brings to mind the sharp, defining leads that John Cale played on his viola – and ‘Glorious,’ in which the strong West African-styled rhythm on the violin is underscored by a thudding, buzzing bass.

The presence of Parks’ voice is also a sign of the strength she commands. She knows how to layer her vocals, how to punctuate a phrase, how to restrain herself to great effect. Mid-album track ‘Iceland Moss’ is a good showcase for this range, as what is a mostly achingly sincere breakup song shifts to a playful, teasing outro.

Parks has made her sense of self and ability to maintain her identity central to her music. The violin, already an outlier as a lead instrument in popular music, is one aspect of that identity. Her assorted rhythmic influences are another. Lyrically, Parks drives home her self-possession, whether in relation to a love interest or a community or a friend who is losing her way. “I’m too unique to kneel,” she asserts on ‘Confessions.’ Sudan Archives is honest, she is vulnerable, but she does not bow, she does not break.

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Bandcamp Daily

The singer's debut full-length album has a fuller R&B and pop-influenced sound.

The Guardian 80

(Stones Throw)
The US singer and violinist’s debut album contains some of the most viscerally gorgeous music put to record this year

Sudan Archives isn’t the most glamorous of monikers, summoning up images of fusty academia or well-organised paperwork. Combined with the fact that the woman behind it – Cincinnati-born, LA-based Brittney Parks – is known for incorporating her experimental violin-playing into her sound, you’d be forgiven for assuming Athena would be chock-a-block with esoteric, highbrow fare designed for a session of solemn chin-stroking.

Pitchfork 77

The L.A.-based singer and violinist makes her boldest and most fully formed statement yet.

The Guardian 60

(Stones Throw)

Although her name suggests a gem unearthed by the crate-digger label Awesome Tapes from Africa, Sudan Archives is an artist of now. Based in Los Angeles, the 24-year-old producer combines genre-defying sound with non-standard violin-playing and an Afro-futurist sensibility. Two previous EPs chart her journey from bedroom experiments with a loop station to fully realised, roots-inflected R&B tunes. So while Sudan Archives bears comparison to other queenly outliers like Solange or FKA Twigs, her sound has remained resolutely individual, informed by the electronic experiments of Cameroonian Francis Bebey.

On this debut album, Sudan’s sphere expands further. From the opening pizzicato plunk of Did You Know to the sultry distortions of Pelicans in the Summer, the variety of modes on offer has pixelated. Tracks like Confessions find western classical strings scything across a song about personal exile, while party grooves like Glorious boast a swirling north African motif on the fiddle. The album title takes its inspiration from Black Athena, a controversial scholastic work on the Egyptian influence on ancient Greece, though the songs often lean more towards the arty end of the mainstream, losing touch slightly with the startling radicalism of Sudan Archives’ early sound.