New Future City Radio

About

Rob Mazurek has always thought beyond the trumpet, his main instrument, to create multimedia electroacoustic worlds with Chicago and São Paulo Underground, Exploding Star Orchestra, and other projects. The ESO’s vocalist, Damon Locks, has pursued a like-minded path with his Black Monument Ensemble. Partnering for the first time as a duo, the two dream up what amounts to musical radio play, complete with cues, voice-overs, an astronomical “weather” update, and other broadcast-type conceits. The result blends poetry and spoken word, ambient noise, hip-hop-inspired sonic collage,and jazz improvisation. The cross-cut sampling on “New Future” is particularly bold, with guest Brandi Augustus reciting what could be the project’s manifesto: “I’m talkin’ resilience and levitation/I’m talkin’ beauty and structural integrity for my people/I’m talkin’ light beams that tell stories and educate.” Most tracks are quite brief, in the mixtape mold, but “The Concord Hour,” “Flitting Splits Reverb Adage,” “Twilight Shimmer,” and “Suspense in the Grip of Suspense” stretch longer, opening space for Mazurek’s searching, lyrical horn and Locks’ adept wordplay (“Breathing tepid heat, throwing distance into stagnant pools of erased histories, letting subculture respond”).

via Apple Music