Abra crafts electro-R&B for urban voyeurs with ‘Princess’

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The narrative of singer-producer ABRA follows an adolescent outsider transplanted from South London to suburban Atlanta, writing lo-fi low-end poetry for years till she breaks wide within Awful Records’ sympathetic collective. It’s a DIY story set to a bedroom-studio beat. Pretend darkwave didn’t already signify a decades-old post-punk subculture and this self-proclaimed Darkwave Duchess could convince you it’s grimy Eastern Seaboard electro for erotic-urban voyeurs. Abra’s latest six track release, Princess (True Panther Sounds), draws dynamic structure and anatomical precision from the I-95 808-led robofunk of Upper Manhattan down to Miami-Dade. It’s a freestyle, distorted bounce building on the wobbly, modulated synths of Britney’s Blackout and compressed, gated compurhythms of the ’80s, but then detouring through spectral, cathartic melodies. ★★★☆☆

[/atlanta/abra/Event?oid=17355653|Abra plays the Masquerade (Purgatory) on Thurs., July 28. $12. 8 p.m. 695 North Ave. 404-577-8178. www.masq.com.]