Author: Gijs Vervliet

‘Snow’ is the third track by REINDIER, taken from his forthcoming album ‘Obsidian // Silk’.

Reinier van Harten (The Netherlands, 1991) is a multimedia artist specialising in music and theatre, creating performances under the monicker REINDIER. His project ‘Obsidian // Silk’ will be released as a stage production, album and short film. The full show will start touring from summer 2021 onwards, preceded by a series of ‘chapter’ releases, in the form of digital video and music on streaming services. This project has been supported by ‘De Nieuwe Makersregeling’ by Fonds Podiumkunsten and ‘Upstream: Music x Design’ from Stimuleringsfonds.
What will be left of mother earth if we don’t change the track humanity finds itself on? Our society is built on an economy addicted to exponential growth at all costs, an attitude illustrative of the cracks in our spiritual foundation. REINDIER: ‘I feel like we, as humanity, are in deep debt with mother earth, which we will have to pay for with an irrevocable collective guilt’. The track sketches a dystopian world in which mother earth addresses us through her song, with the planet slowly becoming snowed under. No flower will bloom, no bird will sing, and humans slowly disappear in her icy landscape. ‘Soon there will be no more pain’: mother earth will start again, but will first clean up the mess humanity left behind. This is a song cloaked in weeping sadness, but it also contains hope. ‘I really believe that we as a collective human family can and must review our ways of living, so we can exist in harmony with nature and mother earth as a whole.’ The Anthropocene has commenced, and now it’s time to act upon the consciousness thereof. A sad protest song, set to a delicate tune, ’Snow’ offers an urgent activist message: one that stands in a bigger context of being out of harmony with the true essence of things. This being out of harmony is a topic that is tackled in different contexts within the full album, touching on topics such as feminine and masculine energy, sexual identity, the digital/technological versus the organic/natural.

In his ability to form conceptual narratives inspired by things he collects and curates from the outside world, REINDIER sets himself apart as a an artist who goes beyond the borders of music, theatre, dance and more. His conceptual creations are truly interdisciplinary. They are timeless, yet modern. It is no surprise that the depths of his research, the broadness of his ideas, the variety of his personas and his ambition to create fully immersive worlds for his audience have drawn comparisons to the likes of Kate Bush, Björk, David Bowie and more.