Over a children’s speaking choir, a voice is layered, distorted, as if coming from a megaphone: »This is our list of demands: beauty! Love! Destiny! Time, future, and light!« What a strange register! When thinking about lists of demands, we usually have the lowering of taxes or child benefits in mind. Yet, as Damon Locks is aware, only excessive aspirations can set off true change. Revolutions, too, are inordinate – in all respects. The French Revolutionary guards, for example, weren’t content with beheading a few aristocrats. They also tried introducing a new calendar and several new religions. In that, as the 19th century was quick to notice, revolutions are somewhat like poetry. They re-arrange everyday occurrences and force one to expose oneself to the novel.
In this sense, Damon Locks is a revolutionary artist. »List of Demands« is an immoderate LP, somewhere in-between Jazz, Abstract Hip-Hop and electro-acoustic manipulations. It doesn’t know the difference between past, present, and future. Audio-Snippets of the »Black Power« movement of the 1970, bird songs and synths intermingle. Locks sometimes raises his preacher’s voice, alternating between authoritative speaking and abstract lyricism. One has to follow his stream of consciousness to enjoy the album. It’s not easy, yet, therein lies it excessive beauty. Locks demands the impossible. The paradox of his list? Everything he desires has already been realized.
List Of Demands
