Killer Brilliance

incl. Download Code / Etching D-Side There's so much complexity in life and human emotion that I have a hard time feeling convinced a song is always either happy, sad, melancholic, angry or scared. I look at these emotions like elements that are constantly colliding with each other, so it's my duty as a songwriter to reflect that. I want to fall in and out of the cracks of genres, finding the nerves not yet hit. "It's usually in the disturbing part of the spectrum" So says Joe Haege, who's earned a reputation for unsettling sounds with 31 Knots and Tu Fawning, and also performed as a member of Menomena and The Dodos. Haege formed WHITE WINE (also known early on as Vin Blanc) as a solo project, but it developed into an informal duo following the release of second album, 2013's In Every Way But One, after Haege invited Menomena / Tu Fawning soundman Fritz Brückner to join him on a European tour. When an apartment fell vacant next to Brückner's home in Leipzig, Haege deserted Los Angeles, and, newly settled in Eastern Germany, added Chistian "Kirmes" Kuhr (of local heroes Zentral Heizung Des Todes) to the coven while helping to build what would become WHITE WINE's default home, Haunted Haus. Having our own fully functioning studio, he points out, is just an incredible tool to have at our disposal. This new line-up finds Haege delivering the most realised, intense and, at times, horrifying music of his career. The product of 18 months spent touring together, Killer Brilliance emerged, he says, from the trio's need to get something dark and sinister out of our systems, and this is reflected, too, in the album's title. We're all killers in some way or another, he continues. Some kill hope. Some kill honesty. Some kill fear. Some kill greed. Some kill out of greed. All kill, in some ways, for our sheer survival. However, the underlying fact is that so many ways of killing are simply amazing in their complexity.