Kangding Ray interview: On his Cannes-winning techno rating for Sirāt and the evolution of rave tradition

Kangding Ray’s sound lives in a liminal, charged house between machine and spirit. His music feels designed but natural, like circuitry studying to breathe.

Born David Letellier, the Berlin-based digital musician composed the unique rating for Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt. The movie premiered in competitors on the 78th Cannes Film Festival this 12 months, and follows a father and son seeking their lacking daughter/sister within the deserts of southern Morocco. It opens with a pounding rave within the dunes, earlier than their search turns right into a hallucinatory street journey by way of Morocco’s arid south, the place they cross paths with an eccentric band of ravers journeying throughout the desert, nonetheless chasing the remnants of that very same beat.

Sirāt shared the Cannes Jury Prize together with Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, and David’s rating was additionally honoured with the Cannes Soundtrack Award. His music strikes from uncooked techno towards ethereal ambient textures; a sonic arc that critics and competition programmers singled out for the way it anchors the movie’s shift from desert rave to non secular street journey. The movie later went on to be chosen as Spain’s official submission on the Oscars 2026.

When Oliver approached David for Sirāt, the filmmaker was looking for a musician who might navigate sound like a metaphysical terrain. The ensuing collaboration between the 2 turned techno into one thing luminous and dissolving. “Oliver had a couple of completely different musicians in thoughts, and I feel I used to be the one who resonated much more instantly with it. He despatched me the script, and I realised the ambition of the mission and his imaginative and prescient. I had a couple of doubts, however I trusted him, as a result of I noticed his movie and found his world. It actually resonated with me”, he says. Their early assembly briefs shortly was regular rituals of mutual attunement. “He would come to Berlin and we have been listening to music… simply listening. The thought was to discover a widespread floor and a standard vocabulary, like a technique to speak collectively.”

When he started shaping the soundscape of Sirāt, David imagined the method as “a gradual dematerialisation of techno.” The movie’s opening half pulses with a well-recognized four-on-the-floor rhythm, however, by its shut, those self same frequencies have dissolved into vapour. “Oliver had Amber Decay and Blank Empire on his reference playlist,” he says. “They have been form of the inspiration, however these are techno tracks, and the rating isn’t solely techno. As the movie advances, the techno turns into much more ambient, much more psychedelic and non secular.”

He needed the continuity of the identical uncooked materials transmuted over time. “I needed to maintain the identical sound to have one thing homogeneous,” he says. “If I put a lot effort and time into one thing like that, I wish to do it totally. I wish to create a coherent work. I don’t need the music to be wallpaper. The coherence wanted to be there between these techno components and the ambient half. So I began to degrade the techno — take out the beats and explode them into particles.”

During the movie’s opening rave sequence, which was staged over three days, David labored with a number of collectives to animate what turned a residing organism. “The wildest moments at raves are those we are able to’t actually discuss,” he laughs. “That’s the spirit of the rave. Usually, in a rave, there aren’t any cameras allowed. So filming one is already very blasphemous.”

He remembers the final day vividly. “I used to be taking part in a protracted set, and the ravers and the filming crew began to bop collectively. It was fairly wild. At some level, Oliver requested the filming crew to cease as a result of he felt it was too invasive. He needed it to proceed with out folks being filmed. It was lovely — to have the decency to cease and provides them a ways, go away them alone.”

David’s personal first trysts with rave tradition got here later in life, by way of Berlin’s membership scene somewhat than the unlawful fields of early British raves. “My first experiences have been extra city,” he says. “I turned built-in in it afterward in my profession. It began with taking part in at golf equipment like Berghain in Berlin, which may be very intense. It launched me to the thought of totally immersive dance.”

He additionally recollects a transformative expertise removed from Europe: “The Labyrinth Festival in Japan, 2011. It was a large sound system positioned in a forest, within the rain, and it stored going it doesn’t matter what. In a approach, that is what the movie is about. You preserve dancing, it doesn’t matter what occurs. You overcome loss of life and ache by way of dance. You exalt a celebration of life.”

The political roots of rave weren’t misplaced on him. “When I used to be a youngster within the ’90s, all probably the most fascinating musical actions have been anti-capitalist and anti-fascist,” he says. “It wasn’t even solely rave — actually all youth tradition was round that concept. That’s been misplaced lots through the years.”

Back then, he stated, the power of resistance bled into each style. “You had bands like Rage Against the Machine pointing at police brutality and American imperialism. In rave tradition, communities have been attempting to create areas of freedom as a result of society wouldn’t permit it. It was a youth that needed extra freedom and an older technology that needed to cease it. It was a lovely factor; melting political consciousness with the power of youth that simply needed to celebration.”

His reverence for sound predates electronics. “I don’t come from an digital background,” he says. “I used to be in a rock band, and extra into noise and industrial music, like Nine Inch Nails. But I didn’t plan to turn into a musician. I used to be an architect.” He additionally speaks instantly of NIN’s Trent Reznor: “I’m a large Nine Inch Nails fan, and have been following what Trent Reznor does.” As an apart, he talked about listening to their newest Tron: Ares soundtrack whereas cooking the day before today (the picture of these intense, grungy sounds seeping into the mundane fairly fittingly captures the raver’s pure state).

Architecture, because it seems, by no means actually left him. “When I moved to Berlin, I met a variety of artists doing the whole lot in between. I labored with Carsten Nicolai (German musician Alva Noto), who turned a little bit of a mentor. He confirmed me the numerous methods to attach structure, artwork, and music. Everything turned one continuum, and the identical idea utilized to a constructing, a sculpture, a movie rating, or a techno album.” His first report, launched virtually accidentally, altered the trajectory of his life. “Life determined in any other case,” he says. “I needed to cease structure and do music. But I didn’t actually select this life.”

Over twenty years, the Kangding Ray sound has shifted from microscopic minimalism to one thing extra emotional. “My first three albums have been very ambient and filigree,” he says. “Then regularly I turned extra within the pure power of techno, as a result of that’s the place I felt there was extra chance for emotional connection. Around 2011, I needed to maneuver from a purely experimental strategy to a extra holistic one, from the membership to the museum and the whole lot in between”. Today, he’s not often noticed with out his iconic black snapback, and collectively they’ve advanced right into a single, inseparable act.

David additionally sees a kinship with a couple of of my private favorite digital musicians who first led me to find his music. “I do know each Jon Hopkins and Nils Frahm,” he says. “We’ve performed collectively, frolicked, and I undoubtedly see them as contemporaries. We every have our personal sound, however there are undoubtedly conceptual bridges. Even if we do various things, we strategy the emotional connection to music in an analogous approach.”

When he gained the Cannes Soundtrack Award for Sirāt, he turned the primary composer recognised there for a rating constructed so deeply on techno and rave. “I used to be very shocked,” he says. “I used to be in an airport once they referred to as. I didn’t suppose they might give it such a rating. But it opens potentialities. It’s an excellent signal that this sort of music could be accepted in such a context. Being in the beginning of one thing is an excellent feeling.”

Among the composers who formed his sensibilities, David cited a lineage of digital visionaries: “Eduard Artemiev, who composed for Andrei Tarkovsky, was one of many first actual pioneers in integrating digital music into arthouse cinema. Vangelis’ Yamaha CS-80 synth pads for Blade Runner nonetheless contact me every time. More just lately, Oliver Coates for Aftersun, Ben Frost, and Geoff Barrow for Ex Machina; they’re all sturdy references.”

As for the long run, he’s already manifesting. “I might like to work with Coralie Fargeat (of The Substance fame),” he says, smiling. “I met her in Cannes, she’s superb. And possibly the Safdie Brothers or Andrea Arnold — they’ve such sturdy emotional movies. I’d like to work extra on radical impartial tasks.”