№ 145 - Kelman Duran

For more than a decade, the Dominican-born, Los Angeles–based artist has been working across sound, rhythm, and moving image, releasing his creations on labels like Milan’s Hundebiss, Boomkat Editions, Joyful Noise or Scorpio Red, the imprint he co-runs with London-based artist Ans M. His musical practice unfolds at the intersection of club music, experimental pop, and other forms of multidimensional sound sculpturing, treating bass, voice, and silence as both physical material and historical signal. Drawing from reggaeton, dembow, electronic music, and ambient structures, Duran constructs inspirational environments that resist a fixed genre 
characterisation.

As a DJ and live performer, Duran approaches the set as a site of collision - collapsing tempos, geographies, and references into unstable rhythmic architectures that foreground the body while unsettling expectation. His collaborative works span from remixing artists like Miami producer Nick Leon, being part of collective projects like the trio Sangre Nueva together with DJ Phyton and Florentino, to creating for and winning a Grammy with Beyonce.

His latest alliance is with Austrian composer and vocalist Franziska Aigner as FRANKIE & Kelman Duran. Their forthcoming debut album, “McArthur,” traces a shared compositional language built from fragmented beats, exposed vocal presence, and moments of suspension. Positioned between club abstraction and contemporary composition, the work signals a new phase in Duran’s evolving practice - one attentive to intimacy, rupture, and resonance. For EDWIN MUSIC CHANNEL, he now prepared a mix that features his very own work and exceptional edits alongside tracks by artists like Baltimore Club music DJ, producer and party MC DJ Rod Lee, Kelman’s buddy Florentino together with Toronto-based producer and DJ Bambii and KD One, as well as infectious edits of music by the late German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, fabled for his groundbreaking work in electronic music and serial composition.

As ever, we spoke to our host, who is rather a quite being when it comes to background information about his career and creations. Instead, Kelman Duran loves to let the music speak, as sound is all we need.

Q. Hello Kelman, how did your journey into music start? What moments early on made you realise this was more than just a hobby?

A. I really think it was just in the air, and I needed to take it in. It wasn't a choice I can say I made alone, if that makes sense, a calling.

Q. Growing up, what sounds or environments shaped the way you hear music today?

A.  I think the place that shaped how I see music was mostly Tijuana in 2013. I lived there for six months. I learned a lot.

Q. What usually comes first for you in the studio - emotion, melody, rhythm, or concept?

A.  A spirit.

Q. Is there a story behind your latest album, “Scorpio Falling”?

A. „Scorpio Falling” took me five years because I really wanted to try and work on an idea for as long as possible, so long that it became part of my practice. I wanted to change some formal habits in music, and make something that is always in the air, that hardly ever lands.

Q. Soon you will release an album with composer and vocalist Franziska Aigner, aka FRANKIE. Can you reveal some insights about this collaboration?

A. Frankie and I met through Edwin Nasr, who curated both of us into a show. From then on, we have just kept it as natural as possible. Frankie came out to L.A., and we finished the work in the Westlake Area, which is an important neighbourhood for me.

Q. We read you love photography. What initially drew you to it?

A. I really like this one book by Takuma Nakahira, „For a Language to Come“ (1970). It really made an impression on me, especially under the circumstances he was in. I really like black and white photos, especially.

Q. Do you consider photography another language through which you express emotion?

A. It is a different language altogether, in my opinion. I am weary of universal laws that are unchanging, so I try to approach every facet from the perspective that it will reveal itself to me if I have done all the necessary work and shown the necessary respect to it. Most things that one thinks are actually universal are quite provincial, in my opinion.