In an era of techno-dystopia, Sudan Archives' 'The BPM' imagines a liberated future

There's a word that keeps popping up on The BPM , the stunning new album by Sudan Archives : sync. It is often used in the context of motion, wanting to align with someone else's rhythm, but I kept thinking about the old process by which digital music libraries would be added to an MP3 player. There was a connection being made, running along the cable linking your computer to your iPod, or whatever other gizmo, all digital, but also mechanized and taken offline. After all, the player was an object housing the files in a way that made them accessible out on the street. Once the process was complete, the two repositories were paired but partitioned; adding new music from the library to the player required syncing again. That interfacing is at the center of The BPM , which wants to sync