Following 2022’s Natural Brown Prom Queen, the American violinist and innovative singer-songwriter Brittney Denise Parks returns with a more electronica-based and hip-hop LP with eclectic beats and beeps, RnB and soul, presenting here the alter-ego of Gadget Girl, a sexualised tech-augmented avatar. There’s a late-night clubby edginess and braggadocio to this release, and as well as keeping her violin-looping DIY spirit, she uses a vintage toolkit of a Roland SP-404 and DAWs emulating the drum machines that defined 1980s Chicago house and ’90s Detroit techno, inspired by her parents' roots in Michigan and Illinois, added to distant African heritage, and collaborators including her twin sister and cousins from her native Ohio-area midwest. Highlights include opener Dead, with rich violin layers, oddball beats and a theme of self-renewal (“Where my old self at? Where my nеw self at?”); her high vocals on Touch Me (“Ketamine and LSD complements my body”); the sensual, sexually confident Yea Yea Yea; A Bug’s Life with its fusion of her violin effects, 90s piano pop and hip-hop; the frenzied club beats of The Nature of Power; the retro-disco sounds of My Type; the fizzling old-school electronica of A Computer Love, and the title track’s exotic adrenalin-fuelled energy (“If I fly you to Costa Rica / Will you give me Pura Vida”). There are quirks and challenges to the listen, especially the more RnB-orientated and vocal distorted numbers such as Ms Pac Man, but Parks remains one of the most striking and original artists around, always seeking to push the boundaries. Out on Stones Throw Records.
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