White Wine
Killer Brilliance
This sordid realisation is mirrored in Killer Brilliances disturbing, sometimes even distressing songs. Brueckners effects-heavy bassoon gives the record a macabre depth, while Kaggressive drumming and percussion, firmly upfront in the mix, drive songs relentlessly to their ultimate demise. Haege, moreover, displays the urgent, menacing air of a preacher man delivering sermons about an imminent apocalypse. Punctuated by contrastingly feminine, spoken word vignettes that add to the uneasy cinematic mood - one that draws upon dystopic visions to '60's style Film Noir - Killer Brilliance piles in with the rabid Broken Letter Hour and the desperately tense Hurry Home (which opens notably with the line "Feeding on the flesh of the young and indifferent") before the extraordinary title track, with its sinister chorus, pops eardrums and eyeballs. Theres also the Birthday Party malevolence of Falling From The Same Place, the growing threat of Abundance - which addresses notions of prosperity and its price - the baroque, carnivalesque Id Run ("Release the devil!") and the deceptive calm of Bird In Hand, which begins with Haeges description of how "The streets were just crawling with people just dying to breathe." and concludes with the ugly truth that "When one of us wins, some of us must lose". Musically, WHITE WINE feed upon an extraordinarily diverse range of ingredients, including PJ Harvey, Liars, Beak, Suicide, Minute Men, David Bowie, Chuck D and Diamonda Galas. "I like to make music that is played when a cafe is closed," Haege cackles, "and not when it's open." Lyrically, meanwhile, Killer Brilliance exhibits Haeges self-confessed "weird affinity for double entendres. It fits my thinking when attempting to cover the ground of a subject. In a world of art and media overload, and the unyielding barrage of advertising, its not easy to find any territory not already well-trodden. Many musicians seek to create music of a fantastic escapism, poetically reframing the harsh reality were all forced to swallow every day. It's an unbelievable skill that I wish I had. However, I'm not one of these. For some weird reason, I have this need to hold onto the sheer madness of existence, all of the suffering and celebrating happening at the same time." Timely and unflinching, this is, by name and by nature, Killer Brilliance. Heres to your health. Youll need WHITE WINE.