‘Sirât’ Composer Kangding Ray on How Synths Helped Craft the Film’s Techno Score and Create Desert Sounds

Oliver Laxe’s “Sirât” is both ambitious and radical, according to the film’s composer and musician Kangding Ray.

“Sirât” is Oscar shortlisted across numerous categories, including casting, cinematography, international feature, sound and original score.

The film follows Luis (Sergi López), a father, and his son Esteban (Brúno Nuñez), who arrive at a desert rave in the mountains of Morocco. They’re on a mission – going person to person among the ravers, handing out pictures of Luis’ daughter Mar, who vanished from one of the raves over five months ago.

Their hope begins to fade, and they trek across the desert to one last party.

Amid it all, Ray’s techno score is a character unto itself with the first sonic beats thumping through the speakers for close to 17 minutes. As the characters face danger and the emotional anguish mounts, the score shifts into an ambient vibe. It was that shift that Ray admits was the most challenging to nail down.

Here, Ray spoke with Variety about coming on early to the film and scoring music to the script rather than the picture and creating a techno-driven score.

What was it about the script that inspired you to be a part of it?

It was very clear that it was an ambitious project and also a radical one. This is my kind of film; it works on different levels and doesn’t explain things too much. It really pushes the envelope in many ways.

When Oliver sent me the script, I was really hooked. I had a few reservations, of course, because I thought he was going very far in certain things, and even for my standards, but I trusted Oliver and his vision.

Your background is in techno and experimental music. Was that the directive Oliver gave you?

The film starts with a 17-minute rave. So obviously, the techno element had to be a big part of that. But to me, that part was the easiest part to compose because this is what I do. Finding the right tone and texture was easy.

When the music dissolves into an ethereal, ambient soundscape and a psychedelic, spiritual journey, that’s where finding the right amount of energy, aggression, violence, and grief, to support the story and to explain things that the dialog couldn’t, was the most challenging part. It was also the most rewarding.

The score is a character and you feel this shift as it goes from thumping energy to that ambient sound, how did you navigate getting it right and timing it so that transition works?

We worked on the pacing many times. The pacing and key were key to making it work. I wanted to have a gradual dissolution, but at the same time, there are a number of shocks happening in this movie. They’re on a trip, and everything is fine, and then something happens and it becomes a nightmare. (The characters enter a minefield, and one of the main characters, Jade, is killed in an explosion).

You need to express those changes, which was the hardest cue to compose. I couldn’t find anything big enough or hard enough or violent enough or wide enough to express what just happened. But eventually, with research, I ended up layering things and made this giant monster that implies the scale of the desert. That’s what brought me back. This is a story of people, but it’s a story which is much bigger than them, it’s a universal story.

We’ve previously spoken about the sound of the desert and how there are elements of sand and even wind in the score. How did you achieve that?

The great thing with working with electronic music is that it’s a very abstract medium. You don’t have a preconceived idea of what you’re going to end up with. I work directly with modular synthesizers, so you select your sound source, and you mix the waveforms. It’s like working with the fabric of the sound itself. It’s not working as like with an instrument where you direct it. The good thing is you don’t put values on what is supposed to be music, and what is supposed to be not music. So all these natural sounds can become a source of inspiration, but also a sonic source in itself.

There’s a beautiful marriage of sound and score in this film. How did you work with Laia Casanova, the film’s sound designer?

Laia did a lot of recordings, and she had a very puristic approach to recording. She recorded the sounds of the rattles and tried to get the sound of the voices in the rave. She recorded in analog with microphones, and so it became quite easy to blend with the score.

Since you scored the script, did it change much once you saw the film or got scenes?

A little bit, but we were quite surprised that it was working. Oliver says often that the shoot was a really well execution of the script. Maybe 10 to 20% had to be tweaked or redone. But we had the desert in mind all the time, to give this continuity.

Jade has a great line when she says, “music’s not for listening, it’s for dancing.” What does that mean to you as a musician?

It’s a great line, because it’s a moment where they realize that they don’t come from the same culture. Luis is frankly annoyed by this type of music. But at that moment when she says this, he says, ‘Oh, that’s what my daughter was always saying.’ At that moment he never he felt really close to her, but he suddenly understands that music has a function. Music was about having a good time or having something harmless playing in the background, but for his daughter and for people of his culture, it’s about something much bigger. It’s something about discovering them yourself on the dance floor with your friends or your community.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.