Please Note: There is a delivery delay on all orders until approximately three days prior to the show. Sudan Archives THE BPM Sudan Archives has always been a champion of self-will and self-belief: A violinist who learned by ear and from YouTube, a gonzo pop star who works outside the mainstream, a deft creator of personal mythology who moved to Los Angeles from Cincinnati, Ohio, to make music that fuses her love of the violin and fiddle music with the contemporary Black underground, all in pursuit of what she calls Orchestral Black Dance Music. Brittney Parks embodies the idea that following your own muse is the surest route to artistic and personal fulfillment. On her third album, THE BPM, Parks embraces that idea fully. If her last two albums looked to the past–embodying both goddess and muse on 2019’s Athena, writing a punky coming-of-age tale for  2022’s Natural Brown Prom Queen–THE BPM imagines a dazzling, chrome-plated future in which we’re all tapped into our own sense of rhythm. As she sings on the album’s title track and thesis: “The BPM is the power.” “No one can take away your rhythm from you–no one can take away your self-will,” says Parks. The ideas she explores on the record all ultimately draw back to this one idea. “All those things can be your own power if you utilize them right.” To get to that place, Parks had to look back at her own history. THE BPM taps into her mother’s roots in Michigan and her father’s in Illinois; it was partially completed in Chicago and Detroit, embracing the club sounds from those cities while taking in everything from Jersey club to contemporary EDM and experimental beatwork. She decided to Executive Produce the album, so after working up demos, longtime collaborator and manager Ben Dickey produced the album with her, alongside co-production by Eric Terhune and James McCall IV, and using additional contributions from her twin sister, her touring band on NBPQ, her Detroit cousins, and friends they brought to sessions there. (The one exception was inviting Chicago-based Black chamber music collective D-Composed to put together a string quartet for the album's anthemic string parts.) After assembling a trusted team, Parks was free to experiment and dig deep into her psyche, knowing she could hand the reins to her collaborators if needed.