‘Bring Your Alibi’ stems from a hot May afternoon when HEZEN invited her friend Laurane Marchive over to a brainstorming session. Amidst the media climate of the #MeToo campaign, the pair envisioned Lisbeth Salander, protagonist of The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, sitting opposite Harvey Weinstein in the dock as his accuser. ‘Bring Your Alibi’ is a song for justice, a powerful reverberation of the social upheavals that #MeToo brought with it, and a voicing of the democratising power of the campaign to break the global silence on sexual harassment. The song is Christine Blasey Ford vs Brett Kavanaugh; it’s the Brock Turner case; but with a violent and suggestive darkness peering through. Through its aggressive sawing synths, gliding like tectonic plates beneath a changing social landscape, HEZEN delivers the brutal and melodic accusation: “did you think I’d let you get away with it?” Revenge is always best served cold.
London-based singer/songwriter and producer HEZEN grew up outside of Paris. Her cosmopolitan background, encompassing Caribbean, Tamil, and Jewish ethnicities, has coloured her family history with narratives of displacement, resistance, and resilience. She began writing songs as a teenager, finding escape in fairy tales, myths, and science fiction. She studied politics and her postgrad brought her to London where she discovered the electronic music scene. HEZEN is dark electronic pop that fuses experimentalism with a canny ear for epic and infectious hooks. Taking influence from artists like Björk, Massive Attack, Sia, James Blake, and Lana Del Rey, HEZEN draws on themes of femininity, strength, and vulnerability to create a seductive and dangerous universe that is at once organic and synthesised, tender and brutal.