For Kemal Golden, creating music is as instinctual as breathing. The multi-talented DJ-musician-producer grew up in Orange County, California where his first introduction to music came via his uncle, who was the drummer for a Grammy-nominated, multi-platinum Rock & Roll band during the 80’s. What began as a young boy’s joy of banging on the drums soon shifted when the adults around him noticed he was playing with a skill beyond his years. Kemal quickly picked up other instruments, “anything I could get my hands on really,” he says, including guitar, piano, drums, and bass.

As a teenager, Kemal performed in a series of bands, continually exploring different sounds. During this period of discovery, in 1996, he came upon electronic music and immediately fell in love with it. His newfound passion led him to start DJing, which he rapidly immersed himself in. Just one week after his 18th birthday, Kemal sold his drum set. With those funds along with the remaining 50% he had saved, he purchased his first set of turntables and started booking local DJ gigs almost immediately.

I would just clear dance floors…
They just wanted to hear Britney Spears and
I wasn’t giving it to them.

he laughs, reflecting on his early gigs in OC. Luckily, Kemal soon found his people at King King, the Hollywood nightclub that’s still a huge draw for club goers and eminent DJs. “The day I got the call from an LA promoter was when I quit all the Orange County gigs,” he says.
I put all of my focus into my LA show on Saturday. I felt like finally I had a place where they appreciated what I was doing. To me that was more important than anything else.

Those nights were also a huge learning experience, where he learned to create completely improvised sets at shows that could last up to six hours.

The talents he cultivated in Los Angeles would soon find an audience abroad. During a chance encounter with a record label owner who was visiting from Switzerland for a DJ gig, Kemal gave him a CD with some of his demo songs. Kemal was immediately signed as an exclusive artist and the label started booking him throughout Europe. It was at a gig in Ibiza, the Spanish resort city renowned for its all-night parties, that Kemal’s idea of what is future could be expanded. He saw DJs who were performing for enormous crowds, playing bigger sounding progressive house music.
I went to all of these huge clubs and it opened up my eyes. It gave me a new recharge to go back to LA, put the sound I was making to the side and get re-inspired, making more of a bigger-room commercial sound of house music.

Since that creative rebirth, Kemal has found himself collaborating with some of the biggest Producer-DJs in the business, including Dave Audé, who has 80 Billboard #1 remixes to his credit; and Kaskade, who made history in 2012 by being the first electronic music artist to headline LA’s Staples Center. Kemal is currently signed with My Vice Productions headed by front man DJ Vice, composing many tracks under his guidance and working on Vice’s remixes for artists such as Enrique Iglesias, DEV, Pitbull, Havana Brown, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, Tulisa, Rita Ora, Yuna, and Akon. On his own, Kemal has remixed tracks for artists such as Kaskade, EDX, Nadia Ali, Jason Derulo, Ciara, Adam Lambert and Linkin Park.

Kemal can’t stop being creative, and finds inspiration at all hours of the day, whether he’s in the studio or not. He has saved hundreds of voice recordings from his old Blackberry, which contain beats and parts of songs he thought of while doing something else.
It all goes back to being a kid and playing music. I love having the idea and then…

He pauses. To finish his thought, he taps his head right above his ear and then opens his palm into the air, releasing imaginary sound waves.