Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek
New Future City Radio
Now Available
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek
New Future City Radio
Kind Words
“... you should put it in heavy rotation.”
- Dave Segal, the Stranger
“Across New Future City Radio, the historic and cultural past reflects the future in fragments.”
- Thom Jurek, Allmusic Review
“New Future City Radio offers a wide array of uncharted beauty, and while the duo may have its own contemporaries out there, in 2023, none stand above Locks & Mazurek. This recording is the epitome of creativity without boundaries.”
- Eddie Ugarte, Ghettoblaster
“...this broadcast is not a vehicle for entertainment as much as it is a clarion call.”
- John Morrison, Bandcamp
IARC0068
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek
New Future City Radio
Out July 28, 2023
Available on LP/CD/Digital via our Bandcamp page
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.
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.
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!"
Selected Press
Pitchfork
Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek Announce New Album, Share Video for New Song “Yes!”: Watch
ourculture
Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek Announce New Album, Share New Single ‘Yes!’
Twistedsoul
Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek announce joint album, New Future City Radio
If It’s Too Loud
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek - "Yes!"
New City
Today In The Culture, May 26, 2023
Bandcamp
Bandcamp Weekly w/ Toshio Matsuura
The Wire
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek - New Future City Radio
Bandcamp
Bandcamp Album of the Day
Treble
Best New Releases, July 21: Blur, Agriculture, and more
Narc
Album Review: Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek – New Future City Radio
Deutschlandfunk Kultur
Trip in eine Soundzukunft: Damon Locks und Rob Mazurek New Future City Radio
Pitchfork
New Future City Radio - Damon Locks / Rob Mazurek
Stereogum
Other albums of note out this week
Rimas e Batidas
Sexta-feira farta: novos trabalhos de Travis Scott, Lord XIV & DJ Dadda, JÜRA, Aphex Twin ou Jessy Lanza
Allmusic Review
New Future City Radio - Damon Locks / Rob Mazurek
The New York Times
Mitski’s Beautifully Moody Meditation, and 11 More New Songs
Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons
Damon Locks on his new album: ‘New Future City Radio’
The Wire
Phil England presents Adventures In Sound And Music
The Attic
Staff Picks - July 2023
Jazz’N’More
Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek - New Future City Radio
Frankfurter Rundschau
New Future City Radio von Damon Locks und Rob Mazurek: Afrofuturistisches aus dem Piratensender
Audio Review
Damon Locks - Rob Mazurek New Future City Radio
Notes
Damon Locks - voice & sampler
Rob Mazurek - trumpet, piccolo trumpet, sampler, modular synthesizers, voice, flutes
Mauricio Takara - electronic percussion, percussion on “The Beat” and “Flitting Splits Reverb Adage”
Roberto Carlos Lange aka Helado Negro – voice on “Flitting Splits Reverb Adage”
Brandi Augustus – vocals on “New Future”
Announcers:
Rosetta Carr – “The Sun Returns”
Andres Hernandez – “The Concord Hour”
Alain 'Fusion' Clapham – “10mins Past The Hour”
Brenda Hernandez – “Las Niñas Estan Escuchando (The Children Are Listening)”
Recorded & Engineered by: Dave Vettraino at International Anthem Studios, Chicago.
Mastered by: David Allen
Album Art by: Damon Locks
Photo of Rob Mazurek by: Ziga Koritnik
Photo of Damon Locks by: Petra Cvelbar
About the Artists
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. Artist page.
Rob Mazurek is a multidisciplinary abstractivist with a focus on electro-acoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, and installation. He spent much of his creative life in Chicago, and some years in Brazil. Currently he lives and works in Marfa, Texas. Artist page.