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Locks, Damon Black Monument Ensemble - Where Future Unfolds - New LP
Locks, Damon Black Monument Ensemble - Where Future Unfolds - New LP
International Anthem Recording Company

Locks, Damon Black Monument Ensemble - Where Future Unfolds - New LP

Regular price $ 22.00 $ 0.00





Where Future Unfolds is a new work spirited by Chicago-based sound & 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). Where Future Unfolds 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 It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, the album presents an inspired, innovative & immediate intersection of gospel, jazz, activism & 808 breaks.
"The music moves easily between Afrofuturist gospel—typified by the spacy synths of “Which I Believe It Will” and the luminous electro beats of “Which I Believe I Am”—and hip-hop grime. “The Colors That You Bring” sets the choir’s soulful harmonies against wavering strings and murky boom-bap drums, like a civil rights protest movie scored the RZA. Upping the intensity, sampled fragments of archived speeches are embedded in the songs; on “Solar Power” a voice proclaims, “There's no black person on this planet that will disagree with freedom.” These spoken snippets give the album a militant edge, recalling interludes from the classic Public Enemy records, where speeches from social reformers like Frederick Douglass were fused with steely breaks.
"Where Future Unfolds began as a retelling of the Civil Rights movement of the ’50s and ’60s, but as the title suggests, it is also concerned with what is to come. At one point we hear the sweet, youthful voice of Rayna Golding—the daughter of Black Monument Ensemble singer Monique Golding—leading the choir in a vow: “I can rebuild a nation no longer working out.” The line comes to encapsulate the tenor of the album: gritty sentiments that radiate an optimistic glow. In the way that music from old eras can be sampled and repurposed into new forms, Locks’s majestic work strives to reach better days by looking back and learning from the past."

Black LP in a heavyweight tip-on gatefold jacket *coated in metallic gold foil* with our standard dome-patterned inner-sleeve, and our Japanese-style obi strip. With 4 art prints.

2019 

Musicians: 
Angel Bat Dawid (clarinets), Dana Hall (drums, percussion), Damon Locks (electronics, bells, voice), Arif Smith (percussion). 

Singers: 
Phillip Armstrong, Monique Golding, Rayna Golding (on "Rebuild A Nation"), Eric McCarter, Tramaine Parker, Lauren Robinson. 

Dancers: 
Anna Martine Whitehead, Raven Lewis (Move Me Soul), Cheyenne Spencer (Move Me Soul), Mary Thomas (Move Me Soul), Bryonna Young (Move Me Soul), Tiarra Young (Move Me Soul). 

Lyrics & Compositions by: Damon Locks. 

Recorded & Mixed by: Charlie Mammoser. 
Mastered by: Casey Rice & David Allen. 

Costumes Designed by: Jamie Hayes at Production Mode. 
Photography by: Daris Jasper & Chris Hershman 

Album Art by: Damon Locks 
Layout & Liner Design by: Craig Hansen 

Recorded Live at Garfield Park Conservatory, as part of Red Bull Music Festival, Chicago, November 15th, 2018.

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