Following its great, stippled surface as a blind man feels Braille, fingertips and maybe the whole palm reading so sensitively that even the vivid the colours become apparent, Kangding Ray´s textured canvas emerges. Ray describes Solens Arc as a parabolic curve celebrating the beauty of flight for its own sake. Four contiguous rainbows, touching end to end to end, describing a full 360 degrees on CD.
It begins indecorously knocking at the door with warrant-carrying police insistence, but the threatening tone quickly abates, light shines in and highs and lows dub off the walls to a far friendlier beat. Fog horn bass gets fuzzier as “Blank Empire” twitches like a galaxy of glitter stars on the ceiling and “Crystal” can´t help but remind me of the piano entry into Mike Oldfield´s ´Tubular Bells´. The roller coaster continues to rocket and the things you will see! Sometimes all in a blur as it plummets into a trough, sometimes more distinctly in the slow climb to a peak.
Solens Arc is smeared so expertly into one great mural, it almost obscures the fact that it actually contains component parts including techno, grandiose progressive rock, doomy space opera, dub and muffled industrial. A rave for all generations.
Stephen Fruitman
