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IF CIGARETTES LOOKED AS DANGEROUS AS THEY ARE, YOU’D #RUNLIKEHELL

Damian Robert Nesta Marley, also known around the world as “Junior Gong” and more recently as “Gongzilla” was born in 1978 to parents Bob Marley and Cindy Breakspeare, Miss World 1976.  As a young adult, he developed a passion and a gift to speak for those who cannot always speak for themselves. A self-proclaimed ‘Spiritual Revolutionary’, Damian has worked assiduously to carve his own niche in music history and to add a new perspective to the Marley legacy for the 21st century. 

At the age of 13, Damian began performing in a group called “The Shepherds” which comprised of Shiah Coore (son of Third World guitarist Cat Coore) and currently a member of his band, and Yashema Beth McGreggor, daughter of reggae singers Freddie Mcgreggor and Judy Mowatt and then began touring with his brothers, Stephen, Ky-mani, Julian and Ziggy. 

By 1996, Damian had already made his stamp as a different kind of Marley when he released his first solo album “Mr. Marley”, a heavily dancehall-influenced album produced by his brother Stephen Marley.  His second album “Halfway Tree” was released in 2001 by a major record label and showcased Damian’s unique gift for blending dancehall, reggae and hip-hop styles.  This album won Damian much recognition and remained on the Billboard Top Reggae Album Charts for 158 weeks and earned him his first Grammy for Best Reggae Album in 2002. 
While honored by this recognition by the global music fraternity, Damian continued to work in the studio, laying the groundwork for the tracks that would become his highly anticipated album, “Welcome To Jamrock”. The lyrics in this album presented Marley as a true spiritual revolutionary, as he used his talent to evoke a spiritual change while trying to enforce a better way of thinking.  He is described as “rhyming with the conviction of a street preacher with the intellect of a university economist”.  

Damian’s hit single “Welcome to Jamrock” was listed as one of the Top 100 Songs of the Decade by Rolling Stone, and at the 2006 Grammy Awards, he won Best Reggae Album and Best Urban/Alternative Performance for Welcome to Jamrock. Damian is the only Jamaican reggae artist in history to win two Grammy Awards on the same night. He is also the only reggae artist to win in the Best Urban/Alternative Performance category at the Grammy Awards. The New York Times called Welcome to Jamrock the “best reggae song of the decade.” 
Welcome to Jamrock led the pathway to Damian’s critically acclaimed collaboration with Nas for 2010’s much lauded album “Distant Relatives” – a project which explored the relationships between reggae, hip-hop and Africa. The album title refers not only to the bond between the artists, but the connection to their African ancestry, which inspired the album both musically and lyrically. USA Today referred to the album as a “potent and often provocative collaboration” and by Rolling Stone as “an Afrocentric winner.” The album debuted at Number 5 on the Billboard Top 200 Album Chart and Number 1 on the R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, Rap Albums and Reggae Albums charts, with Billboard heralding the album as “a dynamic hybrid.”    

The Distant Relatives Tour kicked off in 2011 and saw Damian traveling and performing for thousands of fans all over the world, including South America, Europe, The United Kingdom, The Caribbean and North America.  

Damian continued to cross musical boundaries in 2012, as he went on to partner with Skrillex for their groundbreaking track “Make It Bun Dem”, which Rolling Stone called “a monster mash up of dubstep and dancehall” and has led to several remixes of the original version.  Damian recently released two other singles; “Set Up Shop” and  “Affairs of the Heart” which both received widespread airplay. 

Damian continues to tour with his band all over the world as a way of entertaining and healing as he continues to spread the message for those whose voices cannot be heard. He is working with his brothers Stephen and Julian under their Ghetto Youths International Label, to discover, develop and sign gifted artistes by applying their musical talent and vast experience to create new and different styles of music.  

Damian is currently in the studio working on his upcoming solo album.

"What We Need Now," the monthly podcast by Greenpeace USA, is where you can learn about the work grassroots leaders are doing from the leaders themselves.

Each episode, the hosts explore a different topic related to the intersections of climate, racial and environmental justice, and our movement for a green and peaceful future, and pass the mic to local leaders who are fighting for the world we want to see. 

Greenpeace is an independent, campaigning organization which uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and to force the solutions which are essential to a green and peaceful future.

https://phantogram.komi.io/

Fall In Love Again (Desmond Remix) Out Now
Move In Silence feat. Big Boi Out Now

Sparked by a color or song that recalls the most joyful and tragic moments in your life, a sense memory vaults you into the distant past. These subtle triggers remind us that memory isn’t confined to the mind; it lives in the body, too. Phantogram’s fifth album, Memory of a Day, captures that disorienting sense of time travel. “We put these songs together as a capsule, thinking about how a certain sound or melody can bring you back instantly to a memory of a day,” Phantogram says. 

While they were recording, the duo fixated on life calendars, a gridded sheet in which each unit represents a single week of a person’s life on the planet. As you fill in the grid, you witness the progression of your life in stark terms. The older you get, the darker the grid becomes, reminding you of how much time you have lived, and how little you may have left. “It’s this exploded view,” Phantogram says. “Like an image of Earth from a distance.” The life calendar is both morbid and nostalgic, a physical representation of our ephemeral time on Earth. 

“Days are only numbers,” Sarah Barthel sings on the chorus of “Come Alive.” That lyric became a north star for the duo as they set forth to make Memory of a Day. At once heavy and ebullient, “Come Alive” distills the lasting impact Phantogram has made on popular culture. Since their 2010 debut, Eyelid Movies, Phantogram has been comparable to no one, futurists who still manage to stay ahead of the curve more than a decade into their career. Their genre-bending approach to pop has led them to work with everyone, from Big Boi, with whom they founded Big Grams, to Subtronics, Future Islands, Deftones, the Flaming Lips, Tom Morello, and Miley Cyrus, to name just a few. A festival staple across the globe, Phantogram has also toured with Queens of the Stone Age, Arcade Fire, the XX, and many more. “We’ve always been proud of that: not being afraid of the experimental.”

Though their music has always been future-facing, to make Memory of a Day, Phantogram looked back. “Recording this album, it felt like how it did when we first started making music together,” Phantogram says. Alongside special collaborators like Mikky Ekko and Dan Wilson, Phantogram was joined in the studio by producer John Hill, who helmed Phantogram’s second album, Voices. The duo experimented in the studio and indulged in the music that brought them together in the beginning, artists such as J Dilla, Prince, Slowdive, and so much more. They reference new wave acts like the Talking Heads, ESG, and Liquid Liquid as influences on the percussive punk track “Feedback Invisible,” which is followed by the wistful burst of color “Attaway.” It’s a shoegaze song so sumptuous “you can almost see the grain in the guitar sounds.” 

Phantogram think in images when they write, drawing on scenes from films that linger with them years on. “Ever since Eyelid Movies, our work has been visually driven,” Phantogram says. In the video for the fuzzed-out waltz “All a Mystery,” snippets of human lives coalesce into a montage of experience. “Erase all the tapes in my mind/ Throw them all away,” Barthel sings, accompanied by a bittersweet swell of synths. “Turn back the tables of time/ Let all those memories die.” A swirl of memories, both triumphant and tragic, surface on Memory of a Day. “Come Alive” was written after Barthel experienced a transformative live show on her own, while the title track recounts the moment Josh Carter had to put his dog down. “It’s what you wanted, but couldn’t say,” he sings. “I’m not afraid of dying or what it feels like”

The album’s penultimate track, “Happy Again,” is a thrumming, bass-heavy rock song with a chorus that sounds like a wave crashing against the sand. “Another empty summer sunset/ Feeling homesick,” Barthel sings ahead of the bridge, her voice catching on the breezy, luminous production. “Can you believe this is your life?” It’s a moment of realization Phantogram compares to the dour scene in Forrest Gump, where Lieutenant Dan, “mega depressed and drunk,” throws a bummer New Year’s Eve party. Still, the song ends with an enlivening mantra. “I can be happy again,” Barthel repeats as guitars careen and crash. If days are only numbers, then how else can a person measure a life? On “Ashes,” the answer seems to be in moments of resilience. Based on the adage “you came into this world alone and you’ll leave it alone,” the throbbing production infused with elements of trip hop, shoegaze and indie accompanies Barthel as she reminds the listener: “Ashes rise, ashes rise.”

When they penned the lyrics, Phantogram thought of the mythical phoenix spreading its wings after catastrophe to take flight. The vulnerable, even despairing moments on Memory of a Day are stark, but they’re buoyed by a relentless optimism that has driven this project from the outset. In the Los Angeles studio where they recorded Memory of a Day, Phantogram often marveled at the distance they’ve come, both physically and spiritually, since they first started making music together in a barn in Upstate New York. “Tomorrow never knows,” Barthel nods to the Beatles on “Come Alive.” The accumulation of days together tell a story bigger than any finite lifetime, and Phantogram’s life calendar is only a fraction full.

Radio/Podcast host:
"Benjamen Walker's Theory of Everything" a proud member of PRX's Radiotopia collective. http://radiotopia.fm 
"Too Much Information" WFMU (2009 - 2013)
"The Big Ideas Podcast" The Guardian UK (2011 - 2012) 

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