Kangding Ray, Alva-Noto and Ben Frost tackle "an architectural myth"

Kangding Ray heralds his forthcoming album on Raster-Noton with a new EP featuring contributions from Ben Frost and Alva-Noto.

A press release explains the inspiration behind the work:

“The EP’s title Pruitt Igoe is taken from a gigantic social housing project, completed in 1955 in the U.S. City of St Louis, Missouri, and often regarded as a symbol of the modernist architecture failure. Designed according to the principles of modernism, and by the same architect who would later build the World Trade Center, the project saw a disastrous and violent decliine adter only a few years, plagued with vandalism and massive criminality, leading to its complete destruction from 1972 onwards. Footage of its demolition [is] visibly featured in the 1983 movie Koyaanisqatsi, scored by Philip Glass.

“Pruitt Igoe is more than a post-modern icon; it represents an ancestral movement of hope and disillusion, of perfectly planned models and evaporated dreams. It serves as a judicious metaphor for our era, where the feeling of imbalance and doubt has replaced the certainty of eternal progress and endless economical growth.”

On the A-side, Kangding Ray’s original and Alva Noto’s remix are intended to represent the planning and construction phase, through their clear structure and looping of women’s chants recorded in the streets of a North Indian town. On the flip Kangding and Ben Frost “undertake the demolition process”, musically enacting the building project’s fall into decline and ultimate destruction. Have some of that, modernist utopians.

The 12″ will be released on October 25.