Sudan Archives @ QMU, Glasgow, 6 Dec

Sudan Archives, aka Brittney Parks, is an artist of multitudes. A lifelong “violin nerd” (Parks taught herself to play by ear as a child) with a punk ethos who has never shied away from blazing her own path, she breaks rigid confines, finding synergies across genre and form. In past reflections on the violin she has noted that it is "such a serious instrument in a western concert setting... but in so many other places in the world it brings the party.”

Tonight Parks shows us exactly what she means. Wires descend in the background in a techno-dystopia dreamscape; she climbs a platform wielding her violin bow, a sword. Bass reverberating, she jolts the violin and every gaze in the room is fixed on her. Parks fills the stage and the room with such magnetic presence and boundless energy that make it almost easy to forget tonight’s set is a one-woman performance.

Throughout the set she switches between delivering the Detroit, Chicago and experimental house mixes at the heart of her third record The BPM. There are effortless vocals interluded with swaggering rap; dance and movement; drumming with fervour; and strumming, plucking and brandishing her violin, a totem of power in her dexterous hands.

The BPM’s central persona of Gadget Girl could be interpreted as an exaggerated alter-ego of Parks', her multi-instrumentalist prowess reimagined as the gadgets in her arsenal. It’s exciting watching her come to life on stage: the pounding energy lighting up the intimate dancefloor in an endless futuristic rave. “Where my freaks at?!” she cries out at one point, the audience gladly cooperating to let her know – right here! It’s particularly fun witnessing Sudan Archives tracks from her previous bodies of work reinterpreted through Gadget Girl’s particular brand of unapologetic intensity.

Towards the close, fan favourite Selfish Soul comes as a celebration of communal joy, the warm acoustics providing light amidst grounding electronic heaviness. The celebration continues as Parks treats us to an impromptu Irish jig with her violin, before playing us out with a rousing house-heavy encore of THE NATURE OF POWER and THE BPM. The musical craftsmanship and boundary-blurring ingenuity on display tonight is undeniable: we’re witnessing the future of music, and Sudan Archives can take us there.