'Sirât' Score Blends Techno Terror with Ambient Hope

The film 'Sirât' plunges viewers into a desperate search across Moroccan desert raves, where a father seeks his vanished daughter. Composer Kangding Ray detailed his approach to crafting the movie's distinctive score. The opening features a lengthy techno sequence, a genre familiar to Ray. He then faced the challenge of creating an ambient soundscape that captured the film's mounting dread and emotional turmoil.

Ray elaborated on the score's evolution, noting the difficulty in balancing aggression, violence, and grief to support the narrative. The film, described as ambitious and radical, explores universal themes set against the vast desert backdrop. Ray worked closely with director Oliver Laxe, aiming to score the script rather than the final picture.

The electronic music, created with modular synthesizers, allowed for abstract sound design, blending natural recordings with synthesized elements. This approach enabled the score to reflect the story's shifts from normal experiences to nightmarish turns, like navigating a minefield, culminating in a score that implies the desert's immense scale.