{"title":"Damon Locks","description":"\u003cp\u003eDamon Locks is a Chicago visual artist, musician and sound artist.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"new-future-city-radio","title":"New Future City Radio","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Future City Radio\u003c\/i\u003e, the first duo collaboration of longtime creative partners Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese 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 the multiple critically-acclaimed Exploding Star Orchestra albums composed\/produced by Mazurek. In recent years, Locks has also earned great renown from his revolutionary, expansive latter-day gospel\/jazz project Black Monument Ensemble.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eNew Future City Radio\u003c\/i\u003e finds the duo creating a natural but innovatively-assembled blend of the sounds of those two projects, with Locks’s BME-style sample-based sound collage creating compositional beds underneath the signature Orson Wells-like vocal delivery he’s developed through his work with ESO, alongside Roland SP flourishes and arresting brass improvisations by Mazurek. The album is also filled with vignettes as fractured radio transmissions, featuring contributions by guests including Roberto Lange (Helado Negro) and Mauricio Takara (Sao Paulo Underground). It’s a deep avant-garde echo of the legendary Bomb Squad (Locks even sounding a bit like a tape-delayed Check D on the vox), with beat artifacts spanning the whole gamut from pre to post golden era hip-hop - mixing OG Brooklyn boombox sound with the sci-fi boom-bap of late 90s Def Jux and\/or Dan The Automator’s 75 Ark.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50428958933323,"sku":"2026339","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Grey LP","offer_id":50428959949131,"sku":"2026340","price":27.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"CD","offer_id":50428958343499,"sku":"2026338","price":14.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/New_Future_City_Radio_2b41bb7a_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1726836675"},{"product_id":"black-monument-ensemble-where-future-unfolds","title":"Black Monument Ensemble  Where Future Unfolds","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhere Future Unfolds\u003c\/i\u003e is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound and visual artist Damon Locks. Starting as a solo sound collage piece (where Locks pulled samples from Civil Rights era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine), over 4 years the project has blossomed into his 15-piece Black Monument Ensemble – featuring musicians (including Angel Bat Dawid on clarinets and Dana Hall on drums), singers (alumni of the Chicago Children's Choir), and dancers (members of Chicago youth dance company Move Me Soul). \u003ci\u003eWhere Future Unfolds\u003c\/i\u003e is a live capture of the ensemble's epic debut at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory on the West Side of Chicago. Recalling the spirits of Phil Cohran's Artistic Heritage Ensemble, Eddie Gale's Black Rhythm Happening, Archie Shepp's Attica Blues, and Public Enemy's\u003ci\u003e It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,\u003c\/i\u003e the album presents an inspired, innovative and immediate intersection of gospel, jazz, activism and 808 breaks.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLP - Featuring art by Damon Locks, the 140 Gram LP comes in a heavyweight tip-on jacket coated in metallic gold foil, and standard dome-patterned inner-sleeve and Japanese-style obi strip.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem Recording Co","offers":[{"title":"CD","offer_id":50453979758923,"sku":"1062670","price":12.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"LP","offer_id":50453980545355,"sku":"1062671","price":17.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/03e16860-5895-4b1a-a91f-a87d45592e2f_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727179394"},{"product_id":"list-of-demands-3","title":"List Of Demands","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003ci\u003eList of Demands\u003c\/i\u003e, Damon Locks' first foray into creating an entire album from spoken and text-based work, finds the Chicago-based musician and educator collecting cultural abstractions and reorganising them into a firm truth. The album lays out a vision of Black liberation and transmits it outward as a song cycle of bite-sized MF Doom-meets-Nikki Giovanni rhythm experiments. The sample-based constructions are steeped in a lifetime of not only keen cultural observation, but direct communal participation in the culture. Locks' decades-long resume connects the dots between experimental improvisation, sample based hip-hop, punk, and poetry - each done at the highest level and with a list of collaborators that could spin the head of even the most jaded listener. And that seems to be the point. To jump-start the entire personality spectrum into action. Ecstatic positivity examined via his nuanced grasp of reality, all working toward that ever-evasive concept of what could be.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"International Anthem","offers":[{"title":"Black LP","offer_id":50958430863691,"sku":"2236127","price":29.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/List_of_Demands_8c1d1552_thumbnail_4096_73fb990e_thumbnail_4096.webp?v=1733856656"}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/collections\/test_fbfb4358_thumbnail_4096_00c07a85-3e8d-4658-909b-bda94df9dd9c.jpg?v=1726836625","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/collections\/damon-locks.oembed","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}