*announcing* IARC0068

Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek
New Future City Radio

LP, CD & Digital album out July 28th, 2023

Just in time for summer heat... we're thrilled to announce today a new album by Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek - New Future City Radio – the first duo collaboration of these longtime creative partners.

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.

A lead single from the album – “Yes!” – and an accompanying video created by Locks with animator Rob Shaw are available today.

Preview & preorder

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-acclaimed Exploding Star Orchestra (ESO) albums composed/produced by Mazurek and released by International 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 project Black Monument Ensemble (BME), with which he’s released two albums on IARC (2019’s Where Future Unfolds and 2021’s NOW). New Future City Radio finds the artists 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 Welles-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).

Listen.

"Yes!"

Today’s lead single “Yes!” comes via vibrant, typographically-charged video collage directed by Locks and animated by Rob Shaw, who has worked with Locks on several other projects in recent years, including animated video for Black Monument Ensemble highlight “NOW (Forever Momentary Space).”

The track harkens an avant-garde echo of the legendary Bomb Squad (with Locks even sounding a bit like a tape-delayed Chuck D on the vox), with beat artifacts spanning the whole gamut from pre to post golden era hip hop – mixing the OG Brooklyn boombox sound with the sci-fi boom-bap of late 90s Def Jux and/or Dan The Automator’s 75 Ark.

About the track, Locks says: “Yes! An emphatic statement of purpose. Can the impossible be done? Can Mantronix and DC Go-Go soar the galaxies in search of resonance? This was the first thought when contemplating a broadcast into a new future.” And Mazurek adds his own questions/answers: “Can forbidden harmonies extract utopian honey from canned fruit?! Will we sit and wait and watch while flaming egos and false prophets man the wheels of time? Action is the key. Can you do it?! Colossal beat… melodics hinting at a new dawn. Can You Do it? Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes!”

Watch the video for "Yes!"

*Deluxe Vinyl Package*

New Future City Shimmer color vinyl

New Future City Radio comes on a 140-gram vinyl LP (pressed by Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST) inside a heavyweight matte jacket, with IARC obi strip, massive fold-out poster and dome-patterned inner-sleeve.

And, as always, we have a limited edition color vinyl option for the first pressing only, available via our Bandcamp page only, which is 555 copies of *New Future City Shimmer* color vinyl.

Order a copy via our Bandcamp page today!

For fervent collectors of our catalog...

Including today's New Future City Radio, over the next ~2 months we will announce a total of six new albums on IARC. As an experiment aimed for those of you who collect the whole catalog and have been asking about some sort of subscription offering for ease of ordering / savings on shipments... today we are offering this SUMMER MONDO BUNDLE which collects all six of our upcoming albums into a single parcel. Save money on shipping PLUS an addition 10% on the retail value of the albums as an extra *thank you* for your faith in our output. Bundles come in color vinyl, black vinyl, and CD (no mix and match, sorry).

More info and details on the bundles via order links below >>>

Order the Summer Mondo Bundle on limited edition color vinyl here.

Order the Summer Mondo Bundle on classic black vinyl here.

Order the Summer Mondo Bundle on compact disc here.

Distribution via RedEye for US, Canada, North & South America

This album will also be available on CD, Cassette, and Classic Black Vinyl (same package specs as listed above).

Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!

Distribution via !K7 for Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, and ROW

This album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.

If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!