Wings by Johannes Haage DRIFT

Johannes Haage - guitar, compositions (2-4,6,7,9,10,12)
Matthias Pichler - bass
Joe Smith - drums, compositions (1,5,8,11)

“Wings” is the third album by Johannes Haage´s trio "DRIFT" from Berlin, after “Drift” (2015) and ”Darwin's Blues" (2019).

The three musicians of German, Austrian and American origin met in their current home-base Berlin and have been playing extensively as a Trio for ten years.
The new compositions featured on "Wings” offer a great variety of stylistic starting points from which they embark on musical journeys together, creating open spaces for spontaneous improvisation and mutual interplay. As in a dreamlike state, their music drifts from sparse to dense, from song structures to free improvisation - but always staying true to the melody of the song and the calling of the moment.
At any given time, the three players are equal improvisational actors who let the music develop together without having to put their individual technical skills to the fore.
As on the previous albums, the pieces by Haage and Smith complement each other on “Wings”, because they are different in structure and genesis - whereas Haage's pieces here, depending on the focus, are harmonically, melodically or rhythmically very structured, Smith has used his very personal, vocal-like spontaneous compositional process.

Tracks 2&4 are dedicated to the memory of Jon Delaney (1976-2021) and Gerhard Mantz (1951-2021), two great artists and friends who passed away too soon* while we worked on this record (*unrelated to Covid19)

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The artist run independent label from Berlin, Germany was founded in 2006.

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