Damon Locks & Rob Mazurek (New Future City Radio)

 

New Future City Radio

Both key figures in Chicago’s vibrant jazz scene, Damon Locks and Rob Mazurek are multifaceted artists who have been working together since the peak days of Chicago’s late 1990s and early 2000s music scene up through the present day.  While both artist’s respective discographies run deep, Locks was notably featured as lead vocalist on multiple critically-acclaimed albums by Exploding Star Orchestra, an adventurous jazz outfit led by Mazurek, and Locks has also earned great renown for his revolutionary latter-day gospel/jazz project Black Monument Ensemble.  The two artists have joined forces for the collaborative album New Future City Radio that was released by International Anthem Records on July 28th, 2023.  The album runs like a boombox mixtape as it sonically contemplates community, transformation, and the future through the programmatic format of a pirate radio station for the people.

Damon Locks

Damon Locks is a Chicago-based visual artist, educator, vocalist/musician.  He attended the Art Institute of Chicago where he received his BFA in fine arts.  Since 2014 he has been working with the Prisons and Neighborhood Arts Project at Stateville Correctional Center teaching art.

He is a 2025 recipient of the Creative Capital Award. In 2017 he became a Soros Justice Media Fellow. He received a Helen Coburn Meier and Tim Meier Achievement Award in the Arts in 2015.  In 2019, he became a 3Arts Awardee.  He spent four years as an artist in residence as a part of the Museum of Contemporary Arts’ SPACE Program, introducing civically engaged art into the curriculum at Sarah E. Goode STEM Academy High School.  He teaches Improvisation in the Sound Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  Damon leads the Black Monument Ensemble, is a member of Exploding Star Orchestra and co-founded the band The Eternals.

“Whether performing in his hardcore band, Trenchmouth, or helping lead jazz-based groups such as the Black Monument Ensemble, Locks has been able to unlock the universality of music. His latest solo release, List of Demands, is a dense, tour-de-force collection of improvisational jazz and punk poetry that enhances this musical legacy.”

 

Rob Mazurek

Rob Mazurek is an interdisciplinary artist & abstractivist, with a focus on electro-acoustic composition, improvisation, performance, painting, sculpture, video, film, and installation, who spent much of his creative life in Chicago, and then Brazil.  He currently lives and works in Marfa, Texas.

As a composer Mazurek has written over 500 compositions over the past 30 years and has released 80+ recordings on various labels including International Anthem, Nonesuch, Astral Spirits, Corbett vs Dempsey, Cuneiform, CleanFeed, Delmark, Family Vineyard, Mego, Northern Spy, Rogue Art, and Thrill Jockey.  He has led/co-led many ensembles of various sizes and shapes including Isotope 217, Chicago Underground (Duo, Trio, Quartet, and Orchestra), Pharoah and the Underground (featuring Pharoah Sanders), Jeff Parker Duo, São Paulo Underground, and Exploding Star Orchestra.

Originally inspired by a joint commission from the Chicago Cultural Center and Jazz Institute of Chicago, Mazurek founded the Exploding Star Orchestra in 2005 to investigate the city’s avant-garde musical traditions.  He brought together a group representing the diversity of the city’s contemporary music scene including musicians from Chicago’s North, West, and South-sides, from the then burgeoning post rock scene to the highly influential AACM and Northside Improvisation Scene.  Since the inception the Orchestra has expanded to include musicians from around the world, with an ever-expansive pool of visionaries joining the fray based on the needs of the composition at hand.

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18andCounting / Superman Damn Fool (collaboration)

Superman Damn Fool and 18andCounting present a deep improvised synth session, illuminated by text and texture video collaboration.

St. Louis polymath Stan Chisholm works under the alias 18andCounting and has built himself as a staple in his city’s creative community for two decades.

As an experimental musician, vinyl DJ, visual artist and educator he commonly works in collaborative, communal and improvised settings.  Visually, Chisholm’s works are socio-reflective pop art pieces that use an ever-evolving lexicon of characters, graphic abstractions, and text. Sonically, he brings modular hardware into immersive live experiences, mutating ideas of hip-hop and electronic music into visions both grim and wholly life-affirming.

In 2009, he earned his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.  In 2012, he co-founded Blank Space, a creative hub and community space on Cherokee St.  In 2013, he became the Regional Arts Commission’s first “Artists Count” Fellow.  In 2018, he served as the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis’ first ever DJ-in-residence.  From 2019-2023, he developed and full-time taught Kairos Academies Middle School’s Visual Arts program.  In 2021, he became the first awardee of an STL Art Place Initiative home.  In 2024 he began the Artist in Residence program at the ERDCC via St. Louis University’s Prison Education Program.

Chisholm has exhibited at Laumeier Sculpture Park, City Museum, The Hyde Park Art Center, Paint Louis, Hoffman-LaChance Contemporary, and many other museums, galleries, venues, festivals, and DIY spaces.

Superman Damn Fool creates mixed-media works that fuse sound and image into otherworldly, dark-yet-hopeful experiences. Through modular synths, video synthesis, and experimental techniques, he embraces chance and transformation, drawing audiences into evolving visual and auditory patterns.

 
 

DJ Blvck Spvde

Veto Money is an multifaceted force in St. Louis music – as an organizer, musician, and DJ.  His father, a significant influence, introduced him to jazz and icons like Sun Ra.  The scratched records from his father’s collection—filled with the sounds of Pharoah Sanders and Sun Ra—became a wellspring of inspiration, symbolizing a deep connection to the past.  Spvde’s musical journey was further shaped by contemporary influences like Madlib and Q-Tip, solidifying his artistic tribe and the sound he aspires to create.