Kuboraum Editions presents McArthur, the debut collaborative album by Berlin-based composer and vocalist FRANKIE (aka Franziska Aigner) and Dominican-American producer Kelman Duran, out on January 30th. The release is introduced by the video for the first single, “GRAYT,” which traces the project’s genesis. The track opens with a skeletal beat by Duran that fractures into reggae samples, while Aigner’s vocals linger within percussive absences, giving the impression of a song sculpted out of silence.
The accompanying video—created in collaboration with Enad Marouf and Margarita Maximova—brings together a constellation of friends and long-time collaborators who perform a choreography of disorientation featuring FRANKIE herself alongside, Persik, Billy Bultheel, Beatrix Curran, Basyma Saad and Edwin Nasr. The temporary solace of assembly surfaces adds to the ethereal nature of the track.
Kelman Duran, who gained international recognition for his production work on Beyoncé’s 2022 album Renaissance and subsequent world tour, joins forces with Franziska Aigner, known for her collaboration with Anne Imhof on Faust, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale 2017 and was released on PAN Records in 2019. The two artists first met at the Twelve Apostles Church in Berlin’s Schöneberg district in 2022—a meeting that sparked a years-long collaboration culminating in McArthur.
With Duran on electronics and Aigner on vocals, the album unfolds as a dialogue between rhythm and resonance. Aigner describes her process as writing “into the negative space” of Duran’s beats—filling in and invigorating their inflections without altering their structure. The result is a work where time and geography become elastic, and sonic improvisation becomes a site for quiet, cryptic articulations of intimacy. Produced largely at Warp Studio, overlooking McArthur Park in Los Angeles, McArthur sketches a horizon of convergence and possibility. If unknowability and the fear of extinction shape the present moment, the album responds with a sound that embraces contradiction—both determined and attuned to the tension it inhabits.
The record also features contributions from Alex Zhang Hungtai (Dirty Beaches) and pianist Iris Moldiz, who recorded her parts at the Mozarteum in Salzburg.
