Some records are built in a studio over months. This one was played live, in one afternoon, inside a former schoolhouse. Today International Anthem announced Dawning, the first collaborative album from Damon Locks and the Black chamber music collective D-Composed. It lands December 4, 2026 on LP, CD and digital, and the lead single, "We Stay Beginning," is out now.
The setup is the hook. Locks brings live sampling, beats and spoken word. D-Composed brings a string quartet that improvises: violinists Khelsey Zarraga and Anya Brumfield, violist Seth Pae and cellist Lindsey Sharpe. The whole thing was recorded in one afternoon, April 11, 2026, in the auditorium of The Land School, the headquarters of Theaster Gates' Rebuild Foundation, set in a former elementary school on Chicago's South Side. D-Composed and International Anthem have been creative partners-in-residence there since it opened in 2025.
What "We Stay Beginning" sounds like
A looped two-bar slow jam, Locks working the mic, and the two violinists trading ad-libs under vocal processing that keeps falling apart on purpose. The label compares it to his 2024 spoken beat record List of Demands, only further out and pulled apart dub-style. "We stay in full bloom," Locks keeps insisting, and by the end you believe him.
The rest of the record goes darker and wider. Locks and Zarraga wrote the liner notes together and describe the project this way: "What began as a reflection on our relationship to the land became a sonic experiment reflecting blackness in the present moment through hope, rage, protest, and resistance." They wanted "a sound experience that pulls you in and wrings you out." The label singles out "Reflecting (On Us)/Strange City" as the centerpiece, a cello-led piece where it gets hard to tell what is played live and what is sampled.
The six tracks: "Dawning (On Us)," "We Stay Beginning," "Jet Black Ink" featuring Pauli The PSM, "Reflecting (On Us)/Strange City," "Mourning Loop" and "Don't Recede" featuring Monique Golding, Locks' longtime collaborator in Black Monument Ensemble. Locks made the cover art himself.
The pressing to grab
Here is the scarcity part. On the Bandcamp pre-order page, the limited edition manual press color vinyl is capped at 444 copies worldwide for $32. A classic black LP runs $27, the CD $16 and the digital album $9.99. Both vinyl editions are 140 gram, pressed at Pallas in Germany with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST, the Frankfurt vinyl-cutting studio, and come with an IARC (International Anthem Recording Company) obi strip and insert. If you want the color pressing, do not sleep on it.
There is also a hometown show. On Friday, December 11, Locks and D-Composed play a release celebration back in The Land School auditorium, the same room where Dawning was recorded. Entry is free, with a suggested $20 donation.
Why this pairing hits
Locks has been a Chicago underground fixture since the late 1980s with Trenchmouth, then The Eternals and Rob Mazurek's Exploding Star Orchestra. He also leads Black Monument Ensemble and has drawn covers for International Anthem records by Makaya McCraven, Angel Bat Dawid and Irreversible Entanglements. D-Composed, meanwhile, plays the music of Black composers in galleries, gardens and schools, and the label notes they were the inaugural performers at the Obama Presidential Center opening in May 2026. Put a sampler and a string quartet in a room built for community and you get something neither side could make alone.
If a 444-copy color LP is your kind of hunt, our list of gifts for vinyl collectors has more ideas. For another composer blowing past genre lines this week, read our take on Anna Meredith's Darling. And if you want to hear records like this the way they deserve, here is how to find a real listening bar.
A live record from one afternoon, one room and one neighborhood. That is the whole pitch, and it is a good one.
