Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek New Future City Radio

Description

New Future City Radiois the first duo collaboration of longtime creative partnersDamon Locks&Rob Mazurek. In a hyperactive 40-minute, 18-track suite that runs like a boombox mixtape, the two prolific multi-media artists contemplate community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people.

These two artists have worked together from the peak days of the late 90s / early 00s Chicago music scene up through the present day, which has seen Locks featured as lead vocalist of multiple critically-acclaimedExploding Star Orchestra(ESO) albums composed/produced by Mazurek and released byInternational Anthem(IARC) in 2020 (Dimensional Stardust) and 2023 (Lightning Dreamers). In recent years, Locks has also earned great renown from his revolutionary, expansive latter-day gospel/jazz projectBlack Monument Ensemble(BME), with which hes released two albums on IARC (2019sWhere Future Unfoldsand 2021sNOW). New Future City Radio finds the artists creating a natural but innovatively-assembled blend of the sounds of those two projects, with Lockss BME-style sample-based sound collage creating compositional beds underneath the signature Orson Welles-like vocaldelivery hes developed through his work with ESO, alongside Roland SP flourishes and arresting brass improvisations by Mazurek.

Themes both sonic and text based were predetermined but improvisation leads the journey. The music these two have devised may sound overtly bombastic one moment and gently transportive the next, and often somewhere in between. When asked about New Future City Radio the duo exclaim in one voice: “I’m talking post, post, post, future. I’m talking resilience and levitation. I’m talking beauty and structural integrity for my people. I’m talking light beams that tell stories and educate. Let’s talk about that if you wanna talk new future!” Soundohm