The technology Sudan uses is scrappy, not cutting-edge—she employs a vintage toolkit of a Roland SP-404 and DAWs emulating the drum machines that defined 1980s Chicago house and ’90s Detroit techno. Collaborators include her twin sister, her cousins, and several friends from the Midwest. For all of its post-human imagination—Sudan’s alter-ago this time is “Gadget Girl,” a tech-augmented avatar—The BPM reaches deep into personal and cultural histories. Every few seconds, Sudan and her intimate cadre of producers jolt us from a 3 a.m. hypnosis with some acoustic or makeshift percussion over pounding kicks, a verse sliced with a breakbeat, or wordless, chopped-up backing vocals. The result is far more in touch with its feelings than its debaucherous veneer might suggest.
In the three years since her last album, Sudan broke up with a long-time partner. Having left behind both their shared house and the incense-scented bedroom atmospheres of her earlier oeuvre, Sudan reclaims herself and dance music’s confessional potential, merging Great Lakes hominess and booming arrangements that push toward the red. With the opening “Dead” and aching closer “Heaven Knows,” this is a breakup record that bleeds into the rebound period, smuggling liminality and angst inside a collection of bangers.
If The BPM sounds like the sort of album that might actually win over the mainstream, it’s also Sudan’s grittiest release, less pristine than the widescreen Natural Brown Prom Queen. And if that opus was sun-drenched, this is a wintry mix—all the more for its lyrical fantasies of fleeing to Costa Rica and Dubai. The bass is tectonic, the juxtapositions between short-lived melodies stark. Sudan’s violin parts are as rousing as ever, given breadth and texture by members of the Chicago string quartet D-Composed.
Yet she often tucks these accompaniments into the bridges, intros, and outros of songs, meaning they don’t provide the reckless release that they did in the past. Even an unexpected Irish jig in the center of “She’s Got Pain” only fuels The BPM’s pummelling energy, and later, “Ms. Pac Man” and the showstopping “Noire,” pull us into danker terrain. This dense, claustrophobic album is discomfitingly of the moment: Sudan’s characters sprint through these songs as though movement is a survival tactic, a way to push forward as the world presses down harder than ever.
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