Kangding Ray - A Ray in the Shadow

David Letellier is a producer and an architect. Over the past ten years he's built a deeply personal techno path, dark and intriguing, following in the footsteps of the best Raster-Noton tradition, between rough geometries, dark glitch abstractions, and powerful four-on-the-floor blasts. His is an electronic, dancefloor-oriented fascination that often reflects a conceptual approach that's never trivial. We caught up with him on the occasion of his latest album, "Hyper Opal Mantis", the first to come out on Lucy's Stroboscopic Artefacts after many years spent at the court of the famous German label founded by Olaf Bender and Frank Bretschneider.

More than ten years have now passed since your debut album. How much has techno changed since then, and in what ways?

I don't have a clear view of how electronic music has developed, because my roots are in rock, in noise and industrial music. I'm first and foremost a musician, a guitarist who happened to end up producing contemporary electronic music. Whether you use a drum machine or a violin, it makes no difference to me. It's just music, that's all. The different scenes and genres shouldn't be kept separate — they can inspire each other.

Your music carries a constant climax of tension and nervous energy that makes it recognizable almost immediately. Where does this underlying urgency and frenzy come from?

I'm inspired by everything around me — by politics, the visual arts, architecture, as well as the social changes happening in the world.

With your new album you decided to bring everything together around a very precise idea, tied to the contrast between the human and the technological, between machine and heart. Can you tell us more about what exactly "Hyper, Opal and Mantis" mean to you, and what led you to split the album into these three parts?

There's a duality at the heart of this album, and to explain it I can only point to what I wrote in the press release: "The tension between the natural and the artificial, the body and the mind, which are central themes in electronic music in general, and in techno in particular." The way it was made focuses on technology and interactions with machines, in contrast with the emotional response to sound, the mystical ritual of collective dance, and the ethos of liberation and tolerance that belongs to the culture that produced it.

Tracks like "Epsilon" take me back in time, to your early work. How did this track come about?

There's no real recipe, but I often start with pure sonic research, inspired either by the sound of a new machine, asking myself questions like "let's see what this new filter I just bought can do" and so on, or simply moved by an abstract concept, for example: "What might a wall of sound sound like as it explodes into millions of particles?" Like many producers, I have a range of different electronic machines in my studio, and a whole series of interconnections with cables, yet I work on them in a kind of abstract way, with very few preconceived ideas about where I'm going. Most of the time, I feel I get the best results by following the trail the music leads me down, rather than forcing things toward a specific place and imagery.

You've remixed tracks by artists like Battles, Ben Frost, Dadub, Violetshaped, Mondkopf, ASC, Cassegrain, Inigo Kennedy. How do you choose your remix subjects?

People come to me with all sorts of remix requests, but unfortunately I rarely have time to do it - I only remix when I have enough time (which is rare), and only for musicians I respect.

In your music I consistently sense a very particular sonic cavernousness. It's as if you were playing inside a cave you'd taken refuge in to escape from something. Is that just my impression, or is there something real behind this metaphor?

I've always spent at least a couple of years working on my albums - it's often a complex, labyrinthine process, and, of course, there's an interpretation of the studio as a refuge, a cave in which to express one's inner self. It's not exactly catharsis, but suffering is an essential part of the creative process; I try to charge my music with the same depth as my emotions, so that it can last longer and touch people more deeply.

Stroboscopic Artefacts and Raster Noton are your two production homes. The first is a younger label, while the second is a cornerstone of techno worldwide. What changes for you when producing for one or the other?

Over the past couple of years, I've moved to the outer margins of club culture, the areas where different experimental and avant-garde genres overlap. I intend to keep exploring that zone as a lone wolf, while also trying to give something of my own back to the whole scene: something strong, beautiful and functional at the same time, while keeping my own personality firmly intact in order to bring out something exciting - and, naturally, Stroboscopic Artefacts struck me as the perfect platform for bringing all that out.

Let's go back to your latest work. On "Dune" we seem to witness a hypothetical link-up between certain Idm tendencies and the dark rhythms that are part of your musical DNA. Where does this track, this hypothetical fusion, come from?

For this record I sold all my vintage gear and old synthesizers; I wanted to eliminate any form of nostalgia or period fetishism. I tried to bring out a raw sound that was at the same time modern, hyper-real and high-definition. That was my path.

What have you been listening to lately? (I mean everything, including rock etc.)

I'm sorry, but I'm not that up to date, I'm always too focused on producing my own stuff. But the latest album I've listened to a lot recently was "Blonde" by Frank Ocean.

How are you organizing your next tour and what should we expect for the future?

The next few months will be largely devoted to the new live set of "Hyper Opal Mantis", which will take place in Europe and the United States, then I'll go back into the studio to work on the next chapter.

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