In stores this Friday: DAMON LOCKS' List of Demands
Damon Locks
List of Demands
out Friday, January 31st, 2025
This Friday January 31st, Damon Locks – the Chicago-based visual artist, educator, musician, deejay, and vocalist who is known as the voice of Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, former frontman of legendary punk band Trenchmouth, and leader of latter day liberation music collective Black Monument Ensemble – releases his debut solo album, List of Demands.
List of Demands marks Locks’s first foray into creating an entire album based off of his poetry and texts; but the signature collage work heard in his recent New Future City Radio and ongoing Black Monument Ensemble output is distinctly present in this new 12-song cycle of bite-sized Nikki Giovanni-meets-MF DOOM-style rhythm experiments.
The album’s 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. With his sheer presence as a communal hub himself, Locks has repeatedly demonstrated his capacity to jump-start an entire personality spectrum into action. With List of Demands he does just that, again, projecting an ecstatic positivity via his nuanced grasp of reality, and lucidly articulating the ever-evasive concept of what could be.
(( List of Demands at Mississippi Records in Portland OR ))
!!! Buy it IRL !!!
Below (and here on our website) is a list of record shops that we've confirmed to be stocking List of Demands for its release day this Friday.
London, UK - Stranger Than Paradise Records
Long Beach, CA - Fingerprints
Los Angeles, CA - Amoeba Music
Loveland, OH - Plaid Room Records
Manchester, UK - Piccadilly Records
Medford, OR - Biscuits & Vinyl
Miami, FL - Sweat Records
Minneapolis, MN - Electric Fetus
Montreal, QC - Atom Heart
Nashville, TN - Vinyl Tap
Nashville, TN - Grimey's
New Orleans, LA - Domino Sound
New Orleans, LA - Euclid Records
Norwich, UK - Venus Vinyl
Opelika, AL - 10,000 Hz Records
Orlando, FL - Park Ave. CDs
Ottawa, ON - Birdman Sound
Oxford, MS - The End of All Music
Peterborough, ON - Bluestreak Records
Phoenix, AZ - Zia Records
Portland, OR - Clinton St. Records
Portland, OR - Everyday Music
Portland, OR - Mississippi Records
Portland, OR - Music Millennium
Princeton, NJ - Princeton Record Exchange
Québec, QC - Explosive Groove Disquaire
Québec, QC - Le Backstore
Rock Island, IL - Ragged Records
Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, QC - Le Noise
Santa Cruz, CA - Redwood Records
Seattle, WA - Royal Records
Somerville, MA - Vinyl Index
St Louis, MO - Euclid Records
St. Augustine, FL - Tonevendor
Toronto, ON - Sonic Boom
Toronto, ON - Rotate This
Totnes, UK - The Drift Record Shop
Vancouver, BC - Audiopile Records
Wallingford, CT - Redscroll Records
West Palm Beach, FL - Rust & Wax
Winchester, UK - Elephant Records
Winooski, VT - Autumn Records
Thessaloniki, GR - Father Coffee & Vinyls
Paris, FR - Vinyl and Coffe
Berlin, DE - Hauptsache Musik
Auckland, NZ - Dusty Crates
Paris, FR - Bazar Musiques
Auckland, NZ - Stack Records Limited
Amsterdam, NL - Rush Hour
Asheville, NC - Harvest Records
Austin, TX - Breakaway Records
Austin, TX - End of An Ear
Austin, TX - Waterloo Records
Baltimore, MD - Sound Garden
Bellevue, WA - Silver Platters
Birmingham, AL - Seasick Records
Bloomington, IN - Landlocked Music
Brighton, UK - Family Store Records & Gallery
Brighton, UK - Resident Music
Brooklyn, NY - Academy Annex
Brooklyn, NY - Psychic Records
Burlington, NC - The Record Booth 93 at Granddaddy's
Burnaby, BC - Rick Roll Records
Calgary, AB - That Old Retro Store
Calgary, AB - Blackbyrd Myoozik
Calgary, AB - Melodiya Records
Charlotte, NC - Lunchbox Records
Chicago, IL - 606 Records
Chicago, IL - Reckless Records (Belmont)
Chicago, IL - Reckless Records (Loop)
Chicago, IL - Reckless Records (Wicker Park)
Chicago, IL - Tone Deaf Records
Cincinnati, OH - Shake It
Dallas, TX - Josey Records
Dayton, OH - Omega Music
Dearborn, MI - Dearborn Music
Denver, CO - Twist & Shout
Denver, CO - Wax Trax
Doylestown, PA - Siren Records
Durham, NC - Carolina Soul Records
Edinburgh, UK - Underground Solution
Edmonton, AB - Listen Records
Edmonton, AB - Blackbyrd Myoozik
Fredericton, NB - Backstreet Records
Frome, UK - Raves from the Grave
Glasgow, UK - Some Great Reward
Guadalajara, JAL - Tea Recs
Hove, UK - Capsule
Iowa City, IA - Record Collector
Kamloops, BC - Barnacle Records
Kansas City, MO - Mills Record Company
Kingston, UK - Banquet Gravity Dip Limited
Lawrence, KS - Love Garden Sounds
Letchworth, UK - David's Music
Little Rock, AR - Control
London, UK - Sound of the Universe
London, UK - Phonica Records
London, UK - Rough Trade (East)
London, UK - Rough Trade (West)
Bandcamp Weekly Feature
Damon Locks is featured on this week’s Bandcamp Weekly and has a talk with host Andrew Jervis about 𝑳𝒊𝒔𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝑫𝒆𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒅𝒔. With a killer illustration of Damon by Noopur Choksi.
Los Angeles Album Release Show
2/26 @ Philosophical Research Society
Presented by our dear friends at Living Earth, Locks will perform List of Demands at the Philosophical Research Society on February 26th. This will be Damon's first ever solo performance in Los Angeles!
Wednesday, February 26, 2025
7:30 PM 9:30 PM
Philosophical Research Society
(in the lecture room)
3910 Los Feliz Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA, 90027
Deluxe Vinyl Package
List of Demands comes on a 140g vinyl LP inside a heavyweight jacket, with 16-page newsprint booklet designed by Damon Locks, A3 "Artist Constitution" insert poster, hype sticker and poly-lined innersleeve. Pressed at Pallas in Germany with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST.
Available on limited edition color vinyl for $29 USD.
Also available on classic black vinyl for $24 USD.
(( photo by Jamie Kelter Davis ))
...about Damon Locks...
Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist, musician, and deejay. Known for decades of varied projects in Chicago’s underground music & art scenes, Locks’ CV starts in the late 1980s with the band Trenchmouth, and is highlighted by work with The Eternals (co-led by Trenchmouth bandmate Wayne Montana), Rob Mazurek’s Exploding Star Orchestra, collaborations with Nicole Mitchell, Ben LaMar Gay, and many others.
In recent years Locks has traversed almost every media discipline… including sound/animation work using unheard Sun Ra recordings from Experimental Sound Studio’s archive (with Terri Kapsalis, Wayne Montana, and Rob Shaw); various collaborations with contemporary dancers & choreographers including Ayesha Jaco and Move Me Soul, and Tara Aisha Willis; teaching work with incarcerated artists for the Prison and Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville maximum security prison; and producing cover art for dozens of albums, including several International Anthem releases by jaimie branch, Makaya McCraven, Angel Bat Dawid, Irreversible Entanglements, and more.
In 2018 Locks began work on a new project called Black Monument Ensemble. BME's debut album with Where Future Unfolds was recorded live in Chicago at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory and released in 2019 by International Anthem. The recording documented the first time that the project was presented in a fully expressed format, where Locks debuted the BME large ensemble and turned his poetry, collages & compositions into a soaring experiential performance.
Locks & BME's second album NOW was created in the final throes of Summer 2020, following months of pandemic-induced fear & isolation, the explosion of social unrest, struggle & violence in the streets, and as the certain presence of a new reality had fully settled in. Set up safely in the garden behind Chicago’s Experimental Sound Studio, the music was recorded in only a few takes, capturing the first times members of BME had ever played or sang the tunes. For Locks, the impetus was more about getting together to commune and make art than it was about producing an album. In his words: “It was about offering a new thought. It was about resisting the darkness. It was about expressing possibility. It was about asking the question, ‘Since the future has unfolded and taken a new and dangerous shape... what happens NOW?’”
In July 2023, International Anthem released Locks's project New Future City Radio, a duo collaboration with Rob Mazurek where the two artists contemplate community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people.
In January 2024, Locks releases List of Demands, his first foray into creating an entire album from spoken and text-based work.
!!! Also Available !!!
New Future City Radio is the first duo collaboration of longtime creative partners Damon 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.
New Future City Radio is available on limited edition "New Future City Shimmer" color vinyl LP inside a heavyweight reverse-board jacket with obi strip, fold-out poster & dome-pattern inner sleeve..
