Kangding Ray

Berlin-based French musician David Letellier, aka Kangding Ray, makes pristinely crafted electronic music that places an equal emphasis on avant-garde sound design and visceral impact. After first appearing with glitchy, experimental full-lengths such as 2006's Stabil, he subsequently released more club-oriented EPs like 2010's Pruitt Igoe, as well as conceptual LPs including 2015's Cory Arcane and 2017's dystopian Hyper Opal Mantis. He continues to move forward in the 2020s with music for art installation and films, and crisp, dancefloor-oriented albums such as Ultrachroma (2022) and Zero (2024). Letellier played in bands as a guitarist and drummer prior to taking up production of electronic music. His debut album for Raster-Noton, Stabil (2006), was a sharp, glitchy set that incorporated acoustic and sampled-and-looped elements. Its 2008 follow-up, Automne Fold, was markedly more song-oriented -- a potential gateway into the Raster-Noton label's less traditionally accessible releases. The 2010 EP Pruitt Igoe, which featured remixes by Alva Noto and Ben Frost, found him sculpting his broken, distorted rhythms into something closer to danceable, and the 2011 full-length OR was a masterful blend of club rhythms and chilling post-industrial atmospheres. In 2012, Kangding Ray began releasing material on the Berlin-based Stroboscopic Artefacts label (the explosive Monad XI EP and a split 12" with Pfirter), as well as a more streamlined techno 12" for Raster-Noton called The Pentaki Slopes. Another Stroboscopic EP, Tempered Inmid, appeared in 2013. His fourth full-length, a diverse set of tracks called Solens Arc, was released by Raster-Noton in 2014. Cory Arcane, a refined set conceptually themed around a technology-obsessed ballet dancer going through an existential crisis, arrived in 2015. A split single with Rrose appeared on Stroboscopic in 2016, and the label released the dystopian techno album Hyper Opal Mantis in 2017. Kangding Ray launched his ara imprint with the Predawn Qualia EP in 2019. The first Kangding Ray project of the 2020s was the release of 61 Mirrors, music for SKALAR, an art installation that saw the producer team with Christopher Bauder. Before the release of the music, the installation was presented in Berlin, Mexico, and Amsterdam. June 2022 brought Ultrachroma, a collection of bright and exceptionally taut productions. Next came the shadowy if colorful score to director Hanna Doose's Wann Kommst du Meine Wunden Küssen, issued in 2023. Zero, offering precise, pared-down dancefloor techno (apart from a couple ambient pieces), landed in November 2024. The next March, Kangding Ray returned with Superfluid, a more rhythmically varied EP. ~ Andy Kellman, Rovi