Razen

The prolific Brussels-based ensemble Razen is back on Hands in the Dark with a new stunning collection of fascinating improvisations: ‘Hier l’An 4000’.

Based upon the theme of reincarnation hypnosis and inspired by the writings of Donoso and Slauerhoff, 1940s SF drawings, sky burials and a fantasy of future music where savagery and sophistication meet, the band ventures here into reverse mesozoic exotica. Each piece leans on sampled hand percussion (by grace of the legendary Algerian percussionist Abdelmajid ‘Guem’ Guemguem), augmented by Brecht Ameel, Kim Delcour and David Poltrock’s trademark devotional approach on early music wind instruments and pre-digital keys and synthesisers, spiralling down into their own rabbit hole of repetition and changes.

As gorgeously illustrated by the contemporary British painter Nicholas William Johnson: whilst proposing a futuristic trance-like trek through magenta night skies, toxic radiations and a hostile flora, Razen has never sounded more ecstatic and disruptive.