Pretty sure until I started the research for this post I’d never heard of anyone self-teaching themselves how to play the violin. But that’s exactly what Brittney Denise Parks did after seeing a group of fiddlers in 4th grade. After that fateful day, she asked her mom for a violin and was finally given one a year or two later.

Parks, whose stage name is Sudan Archives¹, took her love of the violin from her home town of Cincinnati to Los Angeles when she was kicked out of her house after high school. Newly relocated, she started writing her own music while immersing herself in the legendary experimental hip hop and electronic music club night Low End Theory at The Airliner in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of LA. She also started attending ethnomusicology classes at Pasadena City College, where she dove deep into the global cultural origins of stringed instruments (as one does).

Thanks to her ties at Low End Theory, she got a connection at Stones Throw Records, with whom she’s released two Sudan Archives EPs and three full-length albums. I’d heard the name Sudan Archives for years, but had never given her much consideration until a coworker (hi Maureen!) told me they were having trouble putting THE BPM down. Give it a listen, and it’s easy to hear why.

Hit play on the video above, for the song “DEAD.” Parks has taken her violin skills, the ethnomusicology education, and Low End Theory experience and combined it into what my Gen X music-loving mind wants to call “techno music.” If you listen closely, you’ll hear evidence of a violin scattered throughout the album, but at its core, this is dance music, primed to make you want to move. She’s released a few videos from the album, all generally built around the premise of Parks mugging for the camera, barely clothed. Watch “A BUG’S LIFE,” “MS. PAC MAN,” and “MY TYPE” — MS. PAC MAN is the most abrasive song on the album, with lyrics like “Put it in my mouth, then my bank account. Fuck you on the couch in my favorite blouse,” but it’s still great. You’d be hard pressed to not shake your booty to this album.

I’ve not yet listened, but from what I’ve read, the past Sudan Archives albums are every bit as good as this one. We all now have our marching orders. Let’s get out and listen, please report back your findings.

^{1. “My mom nicknamed me ‘Sudan,’ and that country happens to have a lot of violin music, which I thought was really cool. ‘Archives’ refers to the musicologist archives that I always try to find, but it also means if you wanna be yourself, you gotta dig deep.” – “Sudan Archives: She’s Different” article in Pitchfork, August 17, 2017↩}