Kangding Ray
Automne Fold

THE REVIEW

It is advisable to occasionally visit the award-winning nursery of electronic botany called Raster Noton.
For enthusiasts of sounds, graphics, and images generated by computers, I dare say the German greenhouse is a must-see. The essential principles of sound cultivation are provided by Carsten Nicolai, aka Alva Noto, while the visual elements are the brainchild of Olaf Bender.

Since 1999, the two have managed a habitat of highly creative musical syntax forms. To illustrate, Nicolai primarily works on the physical impact of sounds starting from those emitted by faxes, phones, photocopiers, modems...
The master gardener assembles rigorous works with surgical cuts on extremely high and low frequencies.
His is a microscopic research in the space, time, and movement of natural sound where error is a provocative and crucial part of the piece.
It occasionally happens that prized seeds arrive from Japan, transmitted by master Sakamoto, and when mixed with local ones, they generate other memorable and perhaps more accessible forms named Insen, Vrioon, and Revep.

For a couple of years, the Chemnitz garden (formerly Karl-Marx-Stadt) has hosted the sound essences of David Letellier, aka Kangding Ray.
The French florist, while working in the already fertilized groove of glitches, jolts, and electric discharges, has given birth to Stabil, a structure with twelve branches, at least half of which have a strong emotional impact. Perhaps it is the melodic lines that cross the electronic pointillism, or perhaps the sense of envelopment that the structure, as composed, transmits to the listener, or it might be the "traditional" skills that David possesses as a former guitarist and drummer that intersect with the highly digital skills that pervade the air of Berlin.
The fact is that Stabil and even more so Automne Fold grow in a new and vulnerable terrain with surprisingly warm colors. It is precisely the second album that reveals an idea of fragility and mystery that often expresses itself in the form of conventional tracks. In addition to the insertions of acoustic instruments like violin and piano on digital canvases, there is also the presence of male and female vocal parts that add pathos and contribute to the sense of intimacy that irradiates the entire album.
It becomes difficult and perhaps even pointless to attempt definitions, comparisons, or epigones, which in the realm of electronic music we know to be more or less the same.
More gratifying, at least for me, to imagine the most successful tracks on the album (idle, word without words, a protest song, automne fold) as beings endowed with breath and sound in close connection with the mind and emotions.

Living beings capable of adding stimuli to that very subtle vibration we call the soul.