It doesn’t happen often that a techno-record works as a conceptual album rather than just a line-up of singles made for the dance-floor. And maybe once a year – if we’re lucky – that techno-album is powerful enough to blow your head off. I’m sorry for every record that’s still to follow this year but »Solens Arc« has definitely filled the position for 2014. It’s just that everything on Kangding Ray’s fourth album converges perfectly. There are techno-tracks full of frayed bass-lines and porous synth-sounds, blazing their trail through our deepest abysses, feeding our deepest paranoia. No euphoria is to be found in these dark corners, instead, there’s excessive delirium, digging its way deeper and deeper, like Christopher Nolan’s »Inception«. The claustrophobic hunting-scenes are connected through ambient phases of slumber, meeting between Carpenterian dystopia, Boards Of Canada’s traumata and intergalactic loneliness. When you’re waking for just a second, they’re just about guessable, before being squashed between shock waves of decomposing sounds. In the end, we’re greeted by our own shadows … and fall therein with watery eyes.
Solens Arc
