Artist Profile: Kangding Ray

Kangding Ray (born David Letellier) first gained notice with ambitious, concept-driven albums on Berlin’s experimental Raster-Noton label. 2011’s OR tackled consumer collapse, Solens Arc (2014) unfolded in four thematic arcs, and 2015’s Cory Arcane alternated raw 4/4 techno with drifting ambient soundscapes. These releases showcased his dual approach to dancefloor energy combined with intellectual depth. As Kangding Ray will arrive at Control on Saturday, November 29, consider this profile your heads‑up.

By the late 2010s, Letellier formalized that club trajectory. In 2019, he founded ara, his own label for organic, emotional club music. The first release was in May 2019, his own Predawn Qualia EP. Key roster moments include Voiski’s At The Speed Of Love and Polygonia’s Living Patterns, alongside outings from ADIEL and 9HØS7, which sketch ara’s emotive, percussive, and tonally rich aesthetic. He also uses ara for his major albums: 2022’s Ultrachroma was an LP of high-energy techno pulsers. Before ara, his Stroboscopic Artefacts full‑length Hyper Opal Mantis (2017) bridged the Raster‑Noton period and his later club focus.

Alongside solo albums, Letellier has launched notable collaborations. In 2015, he formed SUMS with Mogwai’s Barry Burns, a live quartet blending Burns’s guitars and synths with Letellier’s electronics at Berlin’s Atonal festival. More recently, he teamed with UK producer Sigha under the alias Neon Chambers. Their 2019 EP One (Dekmantel) melds ravey stabs and dubstep-influenced bass with IDM textures. The project’s AV‑minded staging further signposted Letellier’s live ambitions.

On stage, Kangding Ray alternates between DJ sets and fully live modular rigs. A 2016 Resident Advisor podcast noted he began integrating laptop and Eurorack synths in clubs to reproduce his complex productions. He has since played Berlin’s Tresor and Berghain as well as festivals worldwide (Unsound, CTM, Dekmantel, MUTEK and more). DJ highlights include London’s Corsica Studios and a special Berghain showcase for Raster-Noton’s 20th anniversary.

He also creates immersive audio-visual environments. His signature installation, SKALAR (debut 2018), is co-created with German light artist Christopher Bauder. SKALAR is a vast kinetic mirror-and-light sculpture synced to Kangding Ray’s 12-channel soundtrack. In performances (for example, at Berlin’s Kraftwerk), Bauder and Letellier animate SKALAR live: audiences stand amid a dark hall of moving mirrors while pulsing lights and rhythms surround them. The effect is intense and ritualistic. SKALAR premiered at Kraftwerk Berlin in Jan–Feb 2018 and returned to Berlin at Dark Matter/TRANSFORMATOR in Mar–Sept 2025. Beyond SKALAR, Letellier has contributed to other AV collaborations (for example, co-designing Raster-Noton’s White Circle installation) and often pairs his DJ sets with generative visuals.

In 2025, Letellier branched into film by scoring Oliver Laxe’s Sirāt, a psychedelic Moroccan thriller that begins with an underground rave. Laxe requested “pummeling techno” that could then dissolve into “ethereal soundscapes,” and Letellier delivered exactly that. The resulting soundtrack starts with tribal, bass-heavy techno and gradually “dematerializes” into ghostly drones by the finale. Sirāt won the Jury Prize at Cannes.

Meanwhile, he has kept up a prolific pace on the club side. Late 2023 saw the Helios Rave Draft EP, followed by the Superfluid EP, and the Polar EP continued the cosmic trajectory. In November 2024, he issued Zero, an ara album framed as a pure dance record (its title nodding to a waveform’s zero‑crossing).

Beyond the records and AV shows, Kangding Ray’s long‑form mixes map the contours of his sound in public. RA, The Bunker, Reclaim Your City, Awakenings Podcast, Smoke Machine, and formative Boiler Room Berlin live sets. They trace the shift from Raster‑Noton abstraction to the tensile, tactile techno language of ara and underscore how his club logic and studio experimentation continually cross‑pollinate.

Over the past decade, Kangding Ray has carved out a niche in electronic music. Evolving from the glacial abstraction of early Raster-Noton to the emotive techno of ara + cinematic scoring reflects a singular vision. He crafts textured music that immerses listeners in visceral groove and conceptual depth.