Kangding Ray — Automne Fold
The album starts off dark, shadowy and edgy with samples of a rain drenched Berlin over eerier stripped electro bass and percussive tones, and it really never full steps back out of the shadows even on the more accessible moments. The album that most came to mind when playing this album mood wise was Autechre’s Amber because of it’s shadowy, bass weaved, edgy and precise take on electronica, though Automne Fold is very much it’s own sonic place. The clinically/complex often static and noise lined beat patterns that are Raster-Noton trademarks are sunk and weaved into a dense often airless tracks that hover with shifts of doomy synth atmospheric and harmonics. With also the of use of more organic elements treading here and there too like contrabass, Detuned piano, bowed guitar, violins and human vocals.
Favourite moments are rather difficult to pick as this works at it’s best as one long shadowy and edgy run but a few key moments come in the form of; A Protest Song with it’s opening shifting clouds of electro textures and beats that drop downs into gloomy guitar sampled textures and bleak synth pop march with looped sparse female vocals by Lene Toje. Downshifters with its tight static rhythmic start that opens up to an almost dubby bass line, weird sampled voice elements and harmonic and quite bright keyboard hits. The bleak hospital first light feeling of Palisades opening with it’s iron lung breathing rhythmic textures – that opens up into some fine contrabass playing by Olaf Casimir and electro- acoustic cinematic dense beat making.
A great dark, creative and intelligent yet accessible slice of electroncia that will appeal beyond the usually Raster-Noton buyer, yet it never compromises or sells it self short manging to be approachable yet experimental.