Razen
Belgian duo Razen consists of Brecht Ameel en Kim Delcour who blend old European music and deep listening into a very pure form of acoustic minimalism.
Belgian duo Razen consists of Brecht Ameel en Kim Delcour who blend old European music and deep listening into a very pure form of acoustic minimalism.
Members: Ameel Brecht
Rain Without Rain
*300 copies limited edition* "Rain and experimental music have had an interesting connection for decades. Under the umbrella of American film music promotion, Hanns Eisler was already looking for "Vierzehn Arten, den Regen zu beschreiben” (fourteen ways to describe the rain) in 1941. A good 20 years later, The Cascades interpreted the periodicity of rain as a rhythm of mourning. For the Beatles ("If the rain falls, they run and hide their heads"), the precipitation inspired the band to use backw…
Dream Fiend
*70 copies limited edition* »Dream Fiend« is the second release in the limited cassette series focusing on Ameel Brecht's »sleep« compositions. Sinking deeper in the world of sleep, »Dream Fiend« strays into the glittering landscape of nightmares, of almost forgotten fears and dream re-enactment disorders. No mandolins or steel resonators on these 4 tracks, but a farfisa and other electronic keyboards reflecting the shining eyes of animals and ghouls in the dark.
Ebb-Tide
*70 copies limited edition* 'EBB-TIDE' is the first release in an upcoming series of limited-run cassettes focusing on Ameel Brecht's "sleep" compositions; music inspired by the vulnerability of sleep, by dream levels, Kleitman and the Wander Company, by sleep's alienation and by the time jungles in the dreaming part of us. As a first CS, 'EBB-TIDE' is about the hushed slow-motion waves of falling asleep, about the moment in-between waking and sleeping, when conscious life ebbs off, daytime rush…
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, set for release September '23. Inspired by the writings of Donoso and Slauerhoff, by 1940s SF drawings, sky burials and a fantasy of …
Egisto e la Chiave del Sogno
** Limited edition of 60. With insert ** An imaginary soundtrack to the films of Egisto Macchi by Brecht Ameel of the Belgium band Razen
Postcards From Hereafter
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 tim…
The Locked Room
Tip! *In process of stocking. Limited edition of 300 copies.* The Locked Room imagines a protagonist who experiences the outside world as an endless escape room, a place where, in the early hours, every passing tail-light, train in the distance, hunched bike rider or crying bird might be a possible riddle, leading to a passage or the discovery of a key.
Once opened, however, a room locked from the other side could just be the same room as the one you're in - only slightly different. And maybe t…
Regression
Tip! Printed artwork on reverse-board inner & outer sleeves.Pressed on 180g Vinyl. Includes DL card. Razen is the collective consciousness of core members Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour, who since 2010 have realized themselves through virtuoistic and highly expressive improvisations with lesser-heard instruments. Experimenting with repetition of tones through controlled breathing and phrasing, Razen arrive at a synesthetic playground of auditory textures and colorful imagery. The ensemble is ca…
Blue Rot (LP)
Razen are back with a second album on HITD, follow up to last year's release 'Robot Brujo'. On 'Blue Rot', the band introduces a softer palette and a new quartet, as the core duo of multi-instrumentalists Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour is augmented with new band member Berlinde Deman on Serpent and guest Thomas Bloch on Glassharmonica and crystal Baschet. Drawing inspiration from late 19th-Century Symbolist art, 'Blue Rot' summons heartbreak and the perils of isolation in languid, hypnotic modes,…
8-Infinities
** Limited to 250 copies ** 8-Infinities represents Discos Transgénero’s first contemporary release after several reissues and archival projects. Stepping away from customary North-American guitar traditions, Ameel Brecht (core member of Razen) presents an utterly singular take on early European music with an album which evokes the inner conflicts of growing up and their connection to the concerns of fatherhood. A classically trained musician, Brecht resorts once again to the use of resophonic g…
The Xvoto Reels
The Xvoto Reels provides additional proof (if necessary) that Razen is an audacious group. If the Belgian band led by the duo Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour has explored different musical worlds with changing formations, the involuntary irruption of a sixth “member” has upset the content of this new album. Through these brutal and unpredictable interventions, it made an ambitious album - recording live improvisations in a church with an organ and a tabla - unique. “When we listened to the tape ree…
Robot Brujo
In the wild and tangled web of sound that makes up contemporary experimental music, it can be hard to see up from down. Beyond all their obvious tasks, record labels double as a crucial lens. Ears to the ground, they build context and understanding for the disparate elements of this sonic world. Among the most notable of these, looking beyond the well trodden path, is Hands In The Dark.Over the last decade, they’ve become an unmissable force, bringing visionary and unexpected projects into focus…
Other People's Crimes
After 'Cobraxine', 'Boogie Throb', and the Ana Ott - released 'Molochville', Brecht Ameel (Razen/Ameel Brecht) gives us his new album under the Br'laaB moniker 'Other People's Crimes'; a high-on-paranoia, pre-crime-surveillance narrative, constructed after hours in the studio from a combination of Ameel's own recordings on a widely varied set of instruments, library music, flea-market broken vinyls and old cassettes. Part blind-overdub palimpsest-collage, part straightforward composition, the 10…
Molochville
Br'laaB is the moniker for the studio works of Brecht Ameel (Razen), consisting on the one hand of themes from Ameel's songbook for the Acid Boogie Quartet, on the other hand of tape collage pieces based on recordings of found audio, ultra-fi sampling, degraded vhs, skipping cd's and sandpaper vinyls. Combining influences that range from Slint to Raymond Dijkstra and from Tape to Peer Raben, the pieces here were assembled and recorded after hours while working on commissions for contemporary da…
Ghost Tropic
Ghost Tropic is first and foremost the name of the third feature from acclaimed Belgian writer-director Bas Devos. The film tells the story of Khadija, a middle-aged cleaner who has no other option but to walk home through Brussels on a cold night after falling asleep on the last train. The journey is a reflection on motherhood and expectations, pride and unknown struggles, stories of the ghostly magic of a lonely night in a big city, of the kindness of strangers and the hurt felt seeing the vul…
Ayîk Adhîsta, Adhîsta Ayîk
**300 copies** Razen celebrate their 10th anniversary with Ayîk Adhîsta Adhîsta Ayîk, an album that takes a paragraph from Cael Gustav Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections as a reference point to set off a journey that goes from light to dark, from day to night, from life to death, and back. As much a reflection of primal imagery and rituals of knowledge as a way of coming to terms with anxieties about the chaos of the night, the album concerns itself with the question: who - or what - are we in…
Contortionist
Brecht Ameel’s (Razen) solo project with the aid of one acid drenched phantom quartet in which he mixes tapes and baroque lute into a sloow hallucinatory eerie whole. Ideal for night listening in the woods 70 copies.
The Night Receptionist
The Brussels-based Razen make experimental and minimal music with unconventional instruments, focusing on tuning, intonation and the use of intervals. Their The Night Receptionist album sees them working again with performance artist and poet, videographer and self-portrait painter Bryan Lewis Saunders. Recorded during a two-week residency at QO2 in Brussels in 2016, The Night Receptionist employs a just intonation system based on the tonality diamond of Harry Partch. The instruments of choice w…
Polygraph Heartbeat
Next to being one of the core members of the acoustic deep listening ensemble Razen, Ameel Brecht is a trained guitar player who has a life-long involvement with the instrument’s repertoire under his belt. On his debut album “Polygraph Heartbeat”, he puts his guitar-heart on the line by means of 9 compositions for steel resonator and resonator mandolin. The album is a reflection of polyphonic music as seen through a multi-coloured and highly personal lens, as Ameel’s guitar idiom crossbreeds a c…
Endrhymes
Brussels-based group Razen present Endrhymes, a work of hardcore melodic minimalism and raw, dystopian deep listening. Exclusive artwork by Bryan Lewis Saunders. The four pieces on Endrhymes thrive on an almost compulsory focus and improvisation carefully developed during many concerts. As a trio, Razen erase the acoustic deep listening from their previous album to explore territory of raw, melodic, and psychedelic minimalism that refers to the massive works of Louis Andriessen. The first and la…