Langston Kelly Human DJ
Langston Kelly Human DJ produces soundtracks that take you into the unknown. The aim is to make music whereby listeners can explore the space between their inner and outer worlds and merge the two. A lover of being taken into new realities, LKHD is not bound by any one genre with music traveling from jazz to folk, hip-hop to cinema, and beyond. The connecting thread is transition. Specifically, LKHD aims to create sounds which cultivate the magical experience, a transformative experience which acquaints us with the holistic aspect of life discoverable in the transition between places and states of mind. He calls this art sonomancy.
A natural traveler with a mind for experimentation, LKHD initially styled himself the “all-improv, DJ-style one man band.” Improvisation is vital for sonomancy which requires one to connect with something greater than themselves. Because improvising demands dexterity of thought and response to intuition and leaves little time to worry over details, it lends itself quite well to this end. Indeed, all of LKHDs performances and albums between 2017 and 2019 were entirely improvised. Improvisation remains a fundamental aspect of his creative process and is continually in development via his weekly releases. However, he is also writing music in his spare time which he plans to release periodically. Stay tuned.
Extended Bio
Langston has performed for a decade with various bands most notably: The Afro Yaqui Music Collective, El Foukr R'Assembly, and Starship Mantis. He toured Algeria with El Foukr in 2016 and performed throughout the eastern US and Canada with Starship Mantis beginning the same year. Starship Mantis was the first band for which Mr. Kelly was the front man performing on both vocals and horns, and composing some of the tunes. By the time the band was retired in 2020, Starship Mantis released 2 albums the second of which, Black Hole Radio AM/FM, features the first professional recording of one of Langston’s orchestrations.
In the midst of forming and touring with bands, Langston was also traveling and performing as LKHD, the all-improv DJ-style one man band. Under this moniker he released 4 albums. LKHD was originally, at least in part, a response to a lacking prevalence of well thought out, yet fully improvised music in the industry. With his third album “Stop Being Dead”, he accomplished his goal of creating a cohesive album with tracks that seem to have been prepared and yet were fully improvised and unedited. With his 4th album “Sunset” he achieved his goal of recording a fully improvised album in one take. Since then, Langston has removed the limitation of “all-improv” from his LKHD work in order to develop his composition and production skills.