Raes studied musicology and philosophy at the Ghent State University, as well as piano, clarinet, percussion, and composition at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Gent. He holds a doctoral degree from Ghent State University, and completed his dissertation on the technology of virtual instruments of his own design and invention. He is a well-known expert in computer technology, robotics, and interactive electronic art, and the author of an extensive real-time algorithmic music composition programming language ‘GMT’, running on the Wintel platform.

As a concert organizer, he has been responsible for programming for the Philharmonic Society at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels and all  concerts at the Logos Foundation in Gent, in total about 150 international new music concerts a year.
He has published numerous critical essays and articles in specialized publications. In 1982 he received the Louis Paul Boon Award for the social engagement in his artistic work. In 1988 he became a professor of music composition at the Ghent Royal Conservatory, and in 1997, a professor at the Orpheus Higher Institute for Music, a commitment he held up to 2009.

In 1990 he designed and constructed a tetrahedron-shaped concert hall for the Logos Foundation in Ghent, which received the Tech-Art prize 1990.

He is currently the president of the Logos Foundation, general director of the Logos M&M ensemble (operating with his spectacular musical robots), and a full-time research professor at the Ghent University Association, School of Arts.