CD Feature/ Ralf Kleemann: "Tides"

How did that harp get there? Even though one immediately associates the instrument with angelic blondes clad in white satin, softly strumming the strings while the wind caresses their hair (am I getting carried away here?), these things are actually very heavy! Who would want to carry so much weight around?

Ralf Kleemann would and he has a very good reason for that: His instrument is not the regular Concert-, but the new Celtic Harp – and you don’t need to be Arnie to lift it. Despite its reduced meisurements, the Celtic Harp has a full and warm sound, perfectly captured on “Tides” by the use of four microphones in two stereogroups – the result is direct and yet deep and unusually organic. The same can be said about the music, which stears clear of kitsch and instead explores the fields of emotional ambiguity: Bitterness and sweetness go hand in hand and so do rough edges and a gentle flow, melancholy and liveliness, tears and smiles. These twelve compositions, all of them Kleemann-originals, dance barefoot under a moonlit sky, hands upraised, until time looses meaning – one piece is actually called “Time Float”. There’s traces of Celtic roots and medieval motives, but they’re always combined into something new and natural, as if they belonged together from the very start.

It has taken Ralf quite some time, but with this, his second album, he has got about everything right. Add to that a love for filming (his “Dream within a Dream”, vailable for free dowload from his homepage, was shown at the Cork Film Festival 2004) and this multimedia-man should be ready to take on the big stages. Or the beaches of this world.

Homepage: Ralf Kleemann
Homepage: CAB Records