RAZEN
“Postcards From Hereafter”

2023 release
Razen’s Postcards From Hereafter was recorded using a 17th century organ tuned at 398 Hz (meantone) in a Belgian cathedral erected in 1305. The ensemble explored, with rich results, the organ’s strict and limiting tuning with an arrangement that included hurdy gurdy, recorders, chalumeau, violone and nyckelharpa. The pieces on Postcards From Hereafter explore the crossover between this world and the next with improvised spiritual, religious music. Brussels-based ensemble Razen use the unique timbral and drone characteristics of their chosen string and wind instruments in improvised, instinctive music that mixes pre-industrial, spectral and ethnic dreamtones with trance and medieval mysticism. The group includes Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour as well as Pieter Lenaerts on five-string double bass and sarangi, Paul Garriau on hurdy-gurdy, David Poltrock on Ondes Martenot, Berlinde Deman on serpent, and Jean-Philippe Poncin on chalumeau and bass clarinet. RIYL: Olivier Messiaen, Sun Ra, Popol Vuh.

Over the past twelve years, the Brussels-based ensemble Razen has been forging a singular path that rethinks the idiom of minimalism and pushes it toward a higher plane; tapping the primal root, while pushing toward the future. Founded in 2010 as duo of Brecht Ameel (organ and string instruments) and Kim Delcour (wind instruments), growing and contracting as an ensemble over the years, the band deploys improvisation and the unique timbral and drone characteristics of string and wind instruments to sculpt landscapes of intuitive long tones, combining the trance-inducing roots of music with a progressive vanguardism that seeks the intangible and the unknown. The band’s releases are emblematic of the hybrid between psychedelic music, Early Music and contemporary spectral approaches. Razen has performed all over Europe on numerous occasions, on international festivals and well-known venues, from Fylkingen in Stockholm to Berghain in Berlin to the small church of Dranouter (Belgium).

“… an intoxicating sauce of stark and tripped out ritual music… which conspires to keep listeners in a semi-permanent trance state” –Julian Cope (Head Heritage).

“… a heady brew of deep listening music that is almost medieval in mood and wholly reverential in technique” –Edwin Pouncey (Wire Magazine).

“Razen push the drone potential of medieval instruments like hurdy gurdy as well as shawm and recorders… into realms of total sensory overload” –David Keenan (Volcanic Tongue).