Sirāt

Few recent films have offered such an overwhelmingly immersive audiovisual experience as Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt. It’s no coincidence that the first shots of the film show tough-looking tech guys assembling an intimidatingly huge sound system on a remote and desolate location, as music is a major driving force behind this cinematic trip. The fourth film by the French-Spanish director (Mimosas, Fire Will Come) begins at a psychedelic rave before embarking on a treacherous journey into the Moroccan desert. The highly unusual score is not only notable for its rough-sounding tribal techno, which will surely deliver a massive stress test to the speakers of any screening room, but also for the exhilarating ways the bass-heavy music undergoes a process of decay, gradually opening itself up to alienating and otherworldly soundscapes that evoke the existential dread at the heart of Laxe’s transcendental odyssey. 
This process of sonic “dematerialization” was the task of David Letellier, renowned in the forward-thinking club scene as Kangding Ray. Having only composed the music of Wann kommst du meine Wunden küssen (2022) before, Sirāt marks Ray’s biggest foray into the world of cinema, and the highly eclectic score of pummeling techno and ethereal soundscapes garnered him the relatively new Cannes Soundtrack Award, which was launched in 2013. 
It’s a deserved win for a musician who is no stranger to storytelling through music. His breakthrough album Solens Arc (2014) already hints how Kangding Ray infuses the more utilitarian function of club music—namely, to make listeners dance—with intricate world-building and numerous narrative details. Traversing the gaps between analog and cybernetic, dance-floor friendly and experimental, dystopian and soothing, Kangding Ray crafts highly textured music that immerses the listener into otherworldly sonic landscapes.
Following its successful world premiere in Cannes, where Laxe won the Jury Prize ex-aequo alongside Mascha Schilinski for Sound of Falling, Kangding Ray touched down in Yerevan to perform his score in a live setting within the framework of Golden Apricot International Film Festival. On the day of his slated “Existential Rave” performance, I sat down with the club musician turned composer to discuss his unique approach to scoring Sirāt.
Filmmaker: With only one scoring credit to your name before Sirāt, I am wondering how you got in touch with Oliver Laxe to begin with. 
Kangding Ray: He simply reached out to me by email, because he already knew my music and was looking for a musician that understood the right textural and atmospheric approach. As a matter of fact, his playlist with reference music already contained a few of my tracks. I was immediately interested, since this would mean much more than just creating techno — there is also this cinematic, more ambient and spiritual side to it. All of this fits my profile, considering I’ve always been straddling between these two worlds.I started out in the experimental scene, where I was doing ambient works in between more club-oriented stuff.
Filmmaker: In an interview I did with Oliver Laxe in Cannes, he told me that he wanted the score to start with full-on pummeling rave music that, over the course of the film, undergoes what he calls a process of “dematerialization.” This decay of the music subsequently mirrors the disintegration of the plot, as Sirāt gradually morphs into a skeletal and existential journey into the void. What did this conceptual process look like for you? 

Kangding Ray: Oliver and I worked for over a year and a half, trying to find the right way to dissolve this techno into something ethereal and spiritual, attaining a kind of musical fervor that you can’t even explain in words. It was highly ambitious of us, and yet somehow it turned out pretty fine. The first goal was to find the right atmosphere that would correspond with what Oliver had in mind. So, I started working on the score way before any images were shot. I knew how he would approach the photography [given] these highly particular textures of his recurring DoP Mauro Herce. I also knew Sirāt would be shot on 16mm film, which allows for a grainy, rough analog feel on the big screen. We wanted to work with this kind of high definition rough analog aesthetic, which is admittedly kind of antinomic. 
Filmmaker: Your music also contains this inherent tension, as it can be defined as extremely physical, often using analog sources, while having this cybernetic and futuristic club feel to it. 
Kangding Ray: Yes, it’s quite paradoxical. The sound of this film is rooted in an album I did called Solens Arc (2014). I was channeling loads of analog machines through tube compressors to get this very rough and raw sound in a way that’s closely linked to what we did for Sirāt, using old and proven gear that brings out a lot of texture. I tried to combine those materials with a more refined style of arranging, skills that I have mastered through refining my production and compositional skills over the past decade. Fortunately, this paradox turned out to be very useful and productive. I was mostly happy to reconnect with this raw, rough, free-spirited type of party techno, capturing this scene which is so specific, autonomous, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian. The ravers you see in the film are quite removed from the institutions that I have to operate in within society. I wanted to portray this culture in a respectful and honest way. 
Filmmaker: Obviously there is an incredible synergy between the music, cinematography and landscape, especially during the opening scene of the film that captures this intense rave in the Moroccan desert. I’m wondering: were you at the rave? And was most music done by then? 
Kangding Ray: About 80% of the music was finished when shooting started.  The party actually went on for three days straight, so it was pretty crazy. I was fully integrated in the rave and actually played a long set on one of the nights—there’s even a little cameo of me when the military arrives to shut the party down. I can tell you it was a proper rave, so what you see on screen has a kind of documentary realism to it. Composing mostly meant talking with Oliver for hours, him explaining all these images he had in his mind, coming over to Berlin to stay at my place and working during long sessions where we’d dive into the music and listen to a lot of things.
Filmmaker: Laxe also told me that for the infamous scene in the treacherous minefield, where these insane synth arpeggios are playing, you were prompted with finding the “first sounds of the universe.” What does it look like to find those sounds? 
Kangding Ray: It was quite bold of me to propose the track we ended up using. This is not the type of music you’re supposed to play during a tense scene like this. Conventionally, you’d do something more suspenseful, like some droning synths. We opted for these weird, psychedelic arpeggios going up and up and up. It’s so strange, but something that I really wanted to try. I actually had this track collecting dust in my archive and never knew what to do with it. We tried many things and nothing really worked. Then, in Berlin one time, I was like, “I have this crazy idea, but let’s try it anyway.” We put the sounds over the images and were like “what the fuck!”

Filmmaker: It’s incredibly scary and moving at the same time.
Kangding Ray: It’s also so beautiful that all the space in between is just silence. It feels like the universe is trying to tell you something there. Personally, I find it calming, because the sounds mirror the idea that it’s okay that you will eventually die, which touches upon the existential core of the film. Simultaneously, it’s scary, but also funny, you know? It creates discomfort.
Filmmaker: The press screening in Cannes that I attended was so tense that people started laughing. 
Kangding Ray: We weren’t too sure about the comic aspect of this scene. We’ve also seen projections where people just go in some sort of trance, but sometimes all this energy just releases and they start laughing. Laughter is sometimes necessary to release all this tension. At the same time, I find the moment to be extremely emotional. 
Filmmaker: You were referring to Solens Arc, but if you take other albums like Hyper Opal Mantis (2017) and Ultrachroma (2022) in account, you could say that your musical output already shows a strong knack for storytelling. These are almost concept albums with their own worldbuilding and narrative arcs, which raises the question of how you approach the narrative framing of an album and how that relates to your scoring work for cinema. =
Kangding Ray: Some people say that my albums are akin to films. You can close your eyes and imagine the story behind them. That certainly applies to Ultrachroma, maybe also to Hyper Opal Mantis and definitely to Solens Arc. Those are very cinematic in their own terms. Cory Arcane (2015) is actually based on the fictional story of a dancer who experiences a breakdown. I guess you could project a film on that story too. I’ve always been interested in storytelling, but music is a very abstract medium and I like to keep it like that. I don’t want to direct the emotions of the listener too much. 
Filmmaker: Currently you are also performing the Sirāt score in a live context. What does that translation from score to performance look like? 

Kangding Ray: It’s a new thing for us. We have already done one show in Santiago de Compostela On Plaza de la Quintana, on one of the main squares of the city. Every show feels quite unique. Usually it involves me playing music of the score, alongside other tracks and outtakes that didn’t make the final cut. There’s actually a lot of music I composed that didn’t end up in the film.  
Filmmaker: Here in Yerevan, your performance is titled “Existential Rave,” which fits the film nicely, but also triggers an interesting question about the urgency of raving and escapism as a kind of political act. Sirāt shows this necessity, as a major geopolitical conflict is raging in the background that could indicate the end of the world. How do these kinds of political considerations factor into your work as a producer, DJ, performer and composer? 
Kangding Ray: It really depends on the context in which you play, because the same music will not resonate the same when you are playing a big festival in Netherlands sponsored by a major alcohol brand or in an underground club in Kyiv during the middle of a war. Context really shapes the political impact of what you can do. But at the core, I believe that this form of escapism within the framework of a club is one of the last genuine spaces for freedom we still have access to. If we don’t have this, we’re only left with endless social media scrolling and privatized commercial spaces. So, it’s an extremely precious thing that we have to protect at all costs. I don’t even know how the youth—or, for that matter, anyone who longs for freedom—can survive and stay sane without it. In Berlin, people take clubbing so seriously, literally like their life depends on it. It’s not just about throwing a party or having fun anymore, it has become their essence of living. If that falls away, these folks will simply go insane. And how to bear the overall pressure we all experience now? A sense of doom lingers everywhere. The sense of the end of the world approaching, of our species slowly going extinct. So, we might as well dance to it. Perhaps being at peace with our finitude allows us to be the happiest we could ever be. 
Filmmaker: Winning the Cannes Soundtrack Award is especially notable, given the fact that within the media landscape this gap between club-oriented musicians and more conventional “auteur” composers is still so palpable, almost akin to the distinction between highbrow and lowbrow culture. Does it feel like you broke some kind of separation between these two worlds?
Kangding Ray: Yes! And I’m very proud of that. I’m probably the first full-blown electronic musician so steeped in techno to be awarded a prize like that. I mean, you have Oneohtrix Point Never, who won the same award for his score of the Safdie brothers’ Good Time (2017). Mica Levi’s scoring work for The Zone of Interest (2023) also includes interesting electronics, but raw and unfiltered techno is a different beast altogether. Admittedly, I’m more interested in the more ambient parts of the score, but the fact that we managed to bring this techno culture into the cinema world at this level is something I’m super proud of.
Filmmaker: Do you feel like that level of recognition will change the trajectory of your career? 
Kangding Ray: Yeah, for sure! I’m very curious what’s coming next and already have met many interesting directors that are keen to work with me. So, it feels like I’m at the beginning of something. But as always in my life, I am just doing my best and see what’s coming along as I go my way. I didn’t even choose this music life to begin with. I used to be an architect who was making a bit of music on the side. Then suddenly my first album came out and it changed my life completely. 

Filmmaker: The comparison between architecture and music is interesting, as both artforms concern themselves so much with structure, texture, pressure, tension and spatial dimensions. Did you benefit a lot from this cross-disciplinary approach to your work?
Kangding Ray: In my case, it’s both a blessing and a curse, because I do so many things. In a world with a very low attention span, that’s not too good for your profile. It’s easier to be recognized by doing only one thing and leaning into that to the point where you become a meme of yourself so you can capitalize on that. I guess it’s my curse that I am able to do a peak time slot in Berghain on a Sunday night and do a soundtrack with lots of ambient parts. I always want to keep it like that, while realising it poses problems for the people who want to work with me and need me to be one fixed thing.
Filmmaker: Related to that: what was your relation with cinema to begin with? Were you deep into film before you embarked on this journey? 
Kangding Ray: When it comes to cinema, I’m still in a learning phase. That’s another reason why being contacted directly by a director like Oliver is one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever been given. He gave me the chance to apply my craft to a huge canvas, the largest I could ever dream of. Simultaneously, because of this chance that I have now, I have to work extra hard and do the best I can do in this field, because I know I still have a lot to learn about the relationship between music, images and cinema. We were really searching for this moment where the images of the desert completely align with what you hear on the score. When you suddenly reach that effect, the otherworldly feeling it gives you is literally something that I live for.