Kangding Ray on scoring Sirāt and divining meaning in the rave

Sirāt’s depiction of a free-party scene in North Africa might not provide many answers to the questions it raises, but its empathetic portrayal and spiritual insights – deepened by a propulsive techno score – open up new possibilities. We speak to composer Kangding Ray about sound, immersion and creating a shared vocabulary with director Oliver Laxe.

In a clearing in the desert looms a giant sound system, its speaker stacks rising ominously like the turrets of a medieval fortress. A growling bassline ricochets off the nearby cliffs, and a crowd of people begins to dance. Into this scene wanders a bereft man and his young son, an interloper among fugitives and outsiders, searching for his missing daughter. 

This is the opening to Sirāt, the latest and most challenging offering from Galician film director Oliver Laxe, whose work deals in unforgiving landscapes, communities on the margins and characters facing existential peril. 

The protagonists in Sirāt  – the Arabic title referring to a narrow path to paradise that crosses over hell – are part of a roving crew of mainly French and Spanish free-party devotees, living in ramshackle trucks and chasing elusive highs at multiday techno raves. Their flight from mainstream society leads them to the harsh deserts of southern Morocco, where an unnamed conflict is brewing and their hedonistic impulses will clash with elemental forces they can’t control. 

Sirāt is a rarity in modern cinema – an arthouse crossover that has found mainstream success despite centring a dissident subculture. Its depiction of free parties is intimate, empathetic and imbued with complex spiritual insights, without shying away from some of the more troubling aspects of the culture. It’s an intense and unsettling film that has left some audiences spellbound and others nonplussed.

Alongside its gritty and immersive cinematography and epic desert locations, the film has garnered praise for its propulsive score and exquisitely observed sound design. Composed by experimental techno and ambient producer David Letellier, a.k.a. Kangding Ray, the score veers from bruising, guttural techno to haunting soundscapes that merge seamlessly with the vast emptiness, merciless heat, sand and rock of the film’s setting. 

Crack spoke to Kangding Ray about his own experiences of raving in the desert, early cinematic influences and the ego dissolution that can come with deep immersion in sound.

I wanted to start by asking you about your own relationship to cinema. Is there a particular film or film score that’s had an impact on how you think sound and image work together?

One of the first cinema shocks I had when I was younger, in the 90s, was La Haine, by Mathieu Kassovitz. That changed my ideas about what cinema could be. It was not only an art piece, it was also a social commentary on the subject of the banlieues [housing estates on the peripheries of French cities]. A radical film, in black and white, with masterful cinematography and storytelling. In terms of scoring, one of the first really strong impressions I can remember is the Blade Runner score by Vangelis. That had a big influence on me. I don’t think I would refer to myself as a proper cinephile, but I was born and raised in France, and cinema is everywhere. It’s in the cultural discussion.

I’m also wondering what your relationship is to the rave culture depicted in the film. Obviously, you’ve been a DJ and a producer for a long time, but have you spent much time at raves out in more remote locations?

Quite a lot, actually. I’ve played the whole spectrum, from free parties to psytrance events to outdoor raves. I even played a rave in the middle of the desert in Morocco in 2019, way before I started working on this film. It was a one-off event called Under the Desert Stars, a collaboration between a Dutch collective and a Moroccan collective, a very boutique, small rave for 400 people. It was a pivotal moment and something that stayed with me and changed my life back then. It was incredible: just one lone sound system and a teepee and carpets. An absolutely mind-blowing sense of community.

How do you feel in that type of desert environment? Is it something that appeals to you?

Well, the interesting thing about the desert is that it puts you back in your place. It tames your ego instantly because it’s unforgiving and also majestically beautiful. I’ve never seen so many stars in my life. It puts everything else in perspective. Social media, the life of the Kardashians – it just makes everything else feel completely irrelevant and useless. 

When Sirāt director Oliver Laxe reached out to you, what was your first reaction to the project?

He sent me the script first, about a year and a half before they started the shoot. After reading it, I had some questions! I was like, OK, this is a bit intense. I felt it was a really radical and very ambitious project. The film asks a lot of questions about our place in the universe, about death, about white people dancing in the desert, the free-party scene, the drugs. But none of them are answered. It’s a film that pushes you to the edge to ask yourself these questions. It’s an immersive, sometimes unpleasant experience, not a feelgood movie. I knew all this from reading the script. It was a project I wanted to be part of. 

After you started to get a sense of what the story was, how did you begin generating ideas for the score?

Oliver came to my studio in Berlin, and at first we really only listened to music and created a common vocabulary together. It was important to align our musical ideas. My role also was to be a guardian of this culture. I wanted to make sure we didn’t create a sort of circus, because the potential of a cringey portrayal of rave culture, free parties and techno is very high. So, I was a bit afraid of that. I had to make sure that Oliver understood.

In terms of composition, the pacing was really important – finding the right BPM so that it works in a cinema, but also finding ways to bring the audience along. It’s important that the score isn’t just nice wallpaper or decoration. It’s more like something that embraces you.

There’s that one rave scene at the beginning where you have a cameo. What was it like to be part of the film?

I didn’t know I was being filmed. They didn’t ask me! [laughs] It was a three-day rave, organised with free-party collectives from Spain and France. It was shot in Spain, and I went there to perform. Everyone plays on laptops at these free raves, and when you see me in the film, I’m struggling to see anything on my laptop. On the last day, I managed to get hold of CDJs. But they were so dusty. It was wild.  

What did you learn about some of the people from those crews?

The people from the collectives are really cool. I’m still in contact with some of them. Obviously, some people from the free-party scene aren’t that happy about being in the spotlight, but most of them were quite content with how they are portrayed, because it’s quite respectful and positive. The sense of community is there, the found family. It’s not just a bunch of drugged-up punks doing crazy things. It’s a valid, alternative way of life with a strong sense of solidarity. It was beautiful. We had a great time with them. 

You said the film raises lots of questions that aren’t really answered. And you touched on this yourself – the film is about these (mostly) European ravers who are in North Africa, and I felt there was an ambivalence in the film about this. What are your thoughts on that?

Sometimes people think that when you portray something, you validate it. But that’s not true. You can actually make stories about people you don’t agree with, but they are still great stories. What I’ve seen is a culture that is usually very respectful of the local culture: they work with the local people, they learn the language and it’s a pretty beautiful cultural exchange. Personally, I don’t see any problem with that. I’m advocating for more relations with people rather than always seeing things in a negative way.

What conversations did you have with Oliver about the more spiritual dimensions of the film?

Oliver is on a very deep spiritual journey with Sufism, which is the more philosophical, more spiritual part of Islam. He lived in Morocco for ten years. I learned so much from him about his spiritual practice. I don’t have such a practice myself, but I engaged with these themes naturally, through a deep immersion in sound – studying the effect of sound as a pure material. It’s almost like a direct connection to vibration and electricity. 

So would you say that immersion in sound is in itself a kind of spiritual experience?

Yeah, a hundred percent. When it gets dark and I’m on my modular synth, I just immerse myself and block out the outside world. I focus on listening and what it does to my body, and what it might do to others. I believe this is very close to a meditation or spiritual practice. 

Sirāt has been nominated for multiple awards. It’s unusual for a film about such a marginal subculture to find this much success. What do you think that says about our culture – is there a yearning for a more visceral, physical experience?

I’ve asked myself this same question. To go all the way to the Oscars and the score being nominated for the Golden Globes and so on – I mean, what the fuck? But there’s something in the zeitgeist that demands answers. So many people are lost. There’s a return to spirituality, in all its forms, not necessarily religion. People want to know, what are we doing here? What’s the point of all this? Because the usual capitalist rat race doesn’t seem to work and it just ends up in chaos. Even if we don’t agree with these free-party travellers, they have found a way to push themselves. They’ve decided to go outside [the system] and not participate. They are asking valid questions. And it’s important to listen.