Where Future Unfolds is the fruit of Locks' vision, an ensemble performance recorded live at the Garfield Park Botanical Conservatory last year.
Locks' project feels revelatory in its bridging of the past and future, its blend of old and new. This is uplifting activist jazz for tumultuous times.
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 by the RZA.
