With Mirages, Razen return to KRAAK to further their ongoing dialogue between archaic ritual and avant-electronic exploration. Long known for shaping ecstatic environments from ancient instruments and extended tonality, the Brussels-based collective—built around multi-instrumentalists Brecht Ameel and Kim Delcour—now turns the desert itself into metaphor and form. The album, recorded in the Echo Chamber at Volta Brussels with engineer Mathieu Clément and released on October 15, 2025, unfolds as eight connected trance-episodes where sound becomes heat shimmer: moving, unstable, unfixed.

Tracks such as In the Deserts, Chlorine Palmeraie, and Neon Petrichor evoke shifting mirages through harmonium drones, shruti box hum, wooden flutes, and skin percussion. Razen’s timbres blur acoustic and electrical sources—feedback merges with overtone singing, harmonics with the static hiss of air. The ensemble’s improvisations evolve slowly, as though carved by wind, balancing control and dissolution in equal measure. The result is both mineral and fluid: a sense of landscape experienced through vibration.

Razen’s music has long occupied a singular place between European drone minimalism, early music intervals, and psychedelic ritualism. Mirages deepens this terrain, stripping away adornment to reveal raw resonance. The dry resonance of bells colliding with organ tones amplifies the affect of distance and thirst—a hallucinatory clarity akin to early Popol Vuh or Éliane Radigue transposed to North African air.

Mastered by Christophe Albertijn, the recording preserves the architectural precision of acoustic space while enhancing the natural overtones that thread through Razen’s live sound. KRAAK’s release design complements this openness, with desert photography by Ward Heirwegh framing the record as both document and apparition.