Kuboraum Editions release with Kelman Duran and FRANKIE

Andriy Zozulya: Your new album 'McArthur', that was recently released, feels indeed like carved out of silence. When you started shaping this record, what was the first sound or feeling that told you, “this is the world we’re building”? 

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Kelman Duran: A lot of music I would guess comes from the thought of being silenced, and I guess the attenuation towards speaking your sort of truth is the impetus for that life project. I’ve , just like anyone else, knows they have a language to share, and maybe that beginning silence is a good place to start that sharing. The world we are building unfortunately, doesn't seem to want to listen to those they have silenced, and wish to continue silencing. 

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The beat on “GRAYT” fractures into reggae ghosts and negative space. What draws you to rhythms that behave like memory glitches rather than straight lines? 

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KD: I try not to think in this linear format, too often it is tied with the legacy of Europe and rationalism, the renaissance, etc. Linear to me is a conceptual device, rather than a material reality, and glitches- although I am averse to conflating computer language with consciousness- are a good way of putting it. 

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Alex Zhang Hungtai’s trumpet and Iris Moldiz’s piano create this strange, ceremonial tension. What were you chasing when you brought them into the fold? 

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FRANKIE: Yeah, both Iris and Alex share this almost devotional relationship to sound, it’s kind of existential. I think we asked them because some parts of the record seemed to need some different emotional charge than what the two of us could have provided. They made beautiful things.

The video summons a small universe of collaborators moving through controlled disorientation. How do you think choreography changes the way we read a song? 

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F: Kelman was in LA and I was in Berlin last summer, which meant that we couldn’t really work on the video together. We decided to ask some of our friends to spend one evening in Berlin together. Beatrix, who was in town from Australia to play a series of concerts with me, Edwin, who had brought Kelman and me together initially and later wrote about the record, Billy, who I worked with on music and performance for the better part of the last fifteen years, our friend Basyma. I’ve kind of grown up artistically with Margarita and Enad, who directed and filmed. Everyone is so good at what they do. Maybe the best part of making a record is that it gives you reasons to gather your friends and make something together. If the choreography shifts the way the song is read, I hope it’s because you can feel that. 

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You’ve always blended diaspora sound, digital decay, and emotional minimalism. Where does 'McArthur' sit within your own personal mythology as a producer? 

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KD: 'McArthur', is the starting point to working collaboratively with other producers and musicians, I think it has and will provide a sort of foundation to be able to continue to create collaborative work in this format, that is a free flowing format of openness and trust, which then maps out a way, and that way can be chosen forthright or let go of. 

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FRANKIE, your voice is almost a presence between the beats rather than on top of them. What was the conversation like around treating the voice as architecture instead of performance? 

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F: We spoke early on about making a record where there were no fixed roles. No pre-destinations about who we were supposed to be to one another or to the music. In that sense, the voice was never meant to sit on top of anything. Maybe that’s what you’re hearing. A kind of community of things.

Your work often feels like it’s documenting some post-club, post-ritual state. What environments were feeding you while making this record: Berlin nights, Dominican roots, or something quieter? 

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K: I like these environments, and the context you put them in, that is post club or  post ritual stage, although, I feel like different times need different actions and agendas to be put forth, as well as a different accentuation of the language used (music for me is the language).

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 For example, there was at one time where people cared for their culture, and not in a gatekeeping way, but in a protective spiritual kind of way, today it feels like these same cultures we once hailed as the roots, have lost its contextual claim to the music, it is as if it is almost a crime to ask for them back, i.e. repatriation of artefacts via the British Museum. The post club stage hasn't hit yet, because the clubs are still tied to financialization even though a lot pretend not to be or use community language to hide their material connections to that system. In short I would rather work and struggle beside those contexts than try to create a post stage version of them, as post can at times veer into willingful forgetfulness, and in this theater forgetting seems to be golden, I rather stay grounded. Hope that makes sense. 

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If McArthur had to be experienced in a non-musical medium, installation, film, text, what form would it take and why? 

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F: It would be a film.