Damon Locks

Damon Locks' musical activity spans post-hardcore, dub, jazz, spoken word, sound collage, and much more. Also a DJ, visual artist, and educator, the Chicago-based musician has worked with a wide variety of individuals in several disciplines. In the 1990s, he explored the margins of post-hardcore as the frontman of Trenchmouth, and in the following decade -- during which he became a long-term core member of Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra -- moved across dub, jazz, and vanguard improv with the Eternals. In 2015, Locks founded the Black Monument Ensemble. After years of rehearsal and public performance, Where Future Unfolds, their full-length debut, appeared in 2019. Now, recorded outdoors during the pandemic, followed in 2021. Locks has since collaborated with Mazurek for New Future City Radio (2023) and released 3D Sonic Adventure (2024) and List of Demands (2025), his first two solo albums. Locks was raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, moved to New York at 18 to attend the School of Visual Arts, and two years later relocated to the Windy City to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and work at the Field Museum of Natural History and the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. The free-form post-hardcore outfit Trenchmouth (with Wayne Montana) formed just after Locks relocated, and they recorded their debut album, Snakebite, in 1989. They remained together as a recording and touring unit until 1996, and then Montana and Locks formed the Eternals in 1999. The latter band's approach was anything-goes but deeply centered on free-flowing dub processes. The band issued their self-titled long-player debut in 2000. Locks' talent and vision couldn't be contained by music alone. He showcased visual and sound art regularly, everywhere from coffee shops and gallery shows to clubs. Along the way, he made the acquaintance of many artists on Chicago's vibrant music scene including fellow visual artist and musician Rob Mazurek, whom he first worked with in Isotope 217 (which also included John Herndon and Jeff Parker among its members). In addition, he appeared on recordings by the Jai-Alai Savant, Joan of Arc, and Josh Larue, and issued two more albums with the Eternals, Rawar Style and Out of Proportion (both 2004). After the band's Heavy International in 2007, Locks joined Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra for 2008's Bill Dixon with the Exploding Star Orchestra in 2008 and 2010's Stars Have Shapes. In addition to music, Locks was deeply involved in teaching in schools and at the Statesville men's prison. The Eternals issued Approaching the Energy Field in 2011, and albums with the ESO in 2013 -- the music and video package The Space Between (billed to Exploding Star Electro Acoustic Ensemble), Matter Anti-Matter with special guest Roscoe Mitchell, and Galactic Parables, Vol. 1 in 2015. That same year, Locks composed a solo sound-collage piece titled Where Future Unfolds. He initially pulled samples from Civil Rights-era speeches and recordings to create an improvisational pallet for performance on his drum machine. Over the next few years, however, the project evolved into a 15-piece group that included clarinetist Angel Bat Dawid and drummer Dana Hall, and the outfit could be adapted to nearly any size depending on the performance. Called the Black Monument Ensemble, the band's sound combined and expanded on the aesthetics of recordings by fellow Chicagoan Phil Cohran & the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, trumpeter 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, intersecting gospel, jazz, hip-hop, social activism, and 808-style electro breaks. The ensemble's debut performance of Where Future Unfolds took place at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory as part of Red Bull Music Festival in November 2018. During the spring of 2019, the International Anthem label released the concert as an album. Locks served as lyricist and vocalist on Exploding Star Orchestra's Dimensional Stardust in 2020. During the COVID-19 summer of 2020, Locks and the Black Monument Ensemble set up instruments, microphones, and recording gear in the garden of Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio. Then they hit "record." Despite the fact that the musicians had not previously encountered the material, its seven selections were captured in only a few live takes. International Anthem released the sessions as NOW in April 2021. In March 2023, Locks reprised his role with Exploding Star Orchestra for Lightning Dreamers; that July, New Future City Radio, a multimedia duo collaboration with Mazurek, was released by International Anthem. The following year, Locks was behind 3D Sonic Adventure, pressed in a small vinyl-only edition by his own Recording Device label. Deeply exploratory solo work continued in 2025 with the International Anthem-issued List of Demands, a sample-based project that also featured instrumentation from Ben LaMar Gay, Macie Stewart, and Ralph Darden, as well as a spoken contribution from poet Krista Franklin.
© Thom Jurek /TiVo