Sebastian Krämer

In the organizer's words:

Love songs to your aunt

How Sebastian Krämer knows your aunt is a good question. And if he knows her, why he dedicates love songs to her, perhaps an even better one. You don't have an aunt at all? Or has she recently passed away? Well, that would at least explain the despair that speaks from some of these pieces, the helplessness, the melancholy. Or the abstruse humor that Krämer doesn't seem to have planned, which comes upon us like fate when we no longer thought it possible.

For the promised love songs, he naturally lards the sky with violins - or more precisely: strings in all formats. Both the Sonnenunter-Gang under the direction of Burkhard Götze and the Bowhéme Berlin quartet support over half of the songs in lovingly composed arrangements. Parts of the album were recorded back in January during a series of workshop concerts at Berlin's Bar jeder Vernunft. Krämer's daughter Hedwig makes her singing debut in the song "Frau Zielinski und der Finsterling". For once, the reality of adolescents' lives is portrayed in a child-friendly way through the eyes of a clinically depressed primary school teacher.

These chansons are not intended to "encourage", nor do they contain slogans or even recommendations for shaping a better world. We are not dealing here with purposeful criticism of existing conditions. But rather an attempt to track down and release the carefully packaged pain in the listener, because it is one of the few things that still shows them their own vitality in the midst of their own personal zombie apocalypse. The bizarre beauty of Krämer's verses and harmonies is in league with that pain. And with your aunt ...