Razen - Hier, l'An 4000

Long after the year 4000, it's highly likely the sun will shine a different light. Equatorial rain belts may have turned into white-ash flotsam. Animal forms will have undergone a major metamorphosis, with only the memories of danger still archaically intact.

Razen tackle the theme of reincarnation hypnosis on Hier L'an 4000, their new album for Hands In The Dark. Inspired by the writings of Donoso and Slauerhoff, by 1940s SF drawings, sky burials and a fantasy of future music where savagery and sophistication meet, Razen here channel a reverse mesozoic exotica. The music leans on sampled hand percussion (by grace of the legendary Algerian percussionist Abdelmajid Guemguem), augmented by Razen's trademark devotional approach on early music wind instruments and pre-digital keys and synths, each of the 4 tracks falling down its own rabbit hole of repetition and change. Trance-walking in a future of magenta night skies, toxic radiation and hostile flora, the Brussels-based ensemble has never sounded more extatic or disruptive.

Hier L'An 4000 features artwork by contemporary British painter Nicholas William Johnson, who previously collaborated with Razen for his science fiction short film They Regard Us As We Regard Them.