Athena

Athena announces a major talent in Sudan Archives. It’s original, exhilarating and unafraid to defy genre.

This album explores that idea of opposites attracting and co-existing within one entity. It’s also a powerful, confident pop record tooled up to compete with the heaviest hitters (Paul White’s production is key, as it has been for Danny Brown and Charli XCX) while occupying its own uniquely ambivalent and querulous space. [Nov 2019, p.60]

Beauty made for basking in. [Dec 2019, p.114]

It brings together the many facets of Sudan Archives--religious and sensual, independent and codependent, tender and menacing--in a way that feels very deliberate, particularly when you learn that the final tracklisting was whittled down from around 60 potential songs. [Dec 2019, p.28]

Having developed a sound so distinctly her own, Parks has liberated herself from any preset expectations of genre or style.

This project, as conceived by the artist, wraps itself in an Afro-futurist stance, an approach to neo-soul that feels right at home played next to the sounds of FKA twigs or Solange. But Sudan Archives still has room to grow while she defines her sound.

While some of the diversity obviously comes from her tasteful selection of collaborators, including Wilma Archer (Jessie Ware, Nilufer Yanya), Rodaidh McDonald (The xx, Sampha) and Paul White (Danny Brown, Charli XCX), there’s never any questions whose unique vision is behind this innovative, unusual and inviting album.

Parks’s debut contains some of the most electrifying and viscerally gorgeous music put to record this year. She may have been inspired by north African one-stringed fiddle-playing and ethnomusicology more generally, but Parks wears her erudition lightly.

All the added instrumental layering and effects -- wriggling synthesizers, buzzing basslines, ricocheting percussion, apparition-like vocal processing, and suchlike -- are nuanced, not once getting in the way of a musician who can put forth an affecting message with just her voice and violin.

Athena isn’t just an album to be listened to, it’s to be experienced. While this is arguably true of all music, this album is filled with deeply textured soundscapes that feel contemporary but also from the not-too-distant future.

Showcases her eclecticism in technique and execution on her magnificent terms.

Sudan radiates confidence on Athena, uniting distinct musical elements as if they belonged together all along. It’s an album that sounds like nothing else.

The songs often lean more towards the arty end of the mainstream, losing touch slightly with the startling radicalism of Sudan Archives’ early sound.