The waves hit high when Willi Papperitz boards a rowboat as Whysker. He is sailing across the water with his wife Kristin on a special mission. The goal is a rocky island with a lighthouse rising into the sky. The brick asparagus, from which the plaster is flaking off, no longer lives up to its name: it stays dark. But salvation is near. Kristin holds a large lightbulb in her hands that is supposed to light up the lighthouse again.
Whysker sings in a smoky voice: “Let’s be a lighthouse and the wild sea too.” The lyrics are thought-provoking, the chorus invites you to sing along. Music and rhythm go straight into your blood. And the guests are already romping around on the dance floor.
No concert for the CD premiere
“It would be nice,” says Willi Papperitz. He is currently not allowed to present his new album, which is called “Leuchtturm” and has just been released, live on stage. The record release party at the EKM in Meerane with 500 guests had to be canceled, as well as all other concerts. When Whysker can go on tour with the band and “Leuchtturm” is currently uncertain. “We rehearse once a week, but we couldn’t start right away either,” says the 34-year-old. “I could play the songs solo.” But that wasn’t the plan.
It would be a shame too. Whysker enriches the twelve German-language songs with wonderful musical ingredients. The violin, for example, played by Luisa Bauer, gives the title piece a touch of City’s “Am Fenster” and is indispensable in “Rotkopf Görg”, since it’s about the magical violinist from Windberg.
Even soft tones
A driving bass and the percussion of Hugo Dressler and Uwe Merbitz give the folk-rock songs, which would be in good hands on ship planks as well as medieval markets, the right momentum. You can even hear a bagpipe, played by Ulf Hainich, and the voice of the singer Linda Jung. The recordings were mainly made in Ludwig Schmutzler’s studio in Dresden, who also produced the album. It wasn’t his first collaboration with Willi Papperitz.
Whysker is on a long journey, he “sets the sails”, tells of a “treasure hunt on the high seas”, of “splinter-fiber naked water” and of a “village in battle”. But he also masters the soft tones, sings of love, loneliness and death. The texts are from him and his friend Jörg Dahlbeck from North Rhine-Westphalia, with whom he speaks on the phone every week.
Animated video for the theme song
Dahlbeck was also involved in Whysker’s 2018 album “In der Ferne”, which introduces the musician as a songwriter. This time, says Papperitz, he wanted to focus on the other facets of his work, which was what many fans wanted. He financed the project through crowdfunding, with support from the “Art Defies Corona” program.
A video is being created for the title song, for which the rowing Whysker and his wife were filmed on a pond near Ullersdorf. The Potsdam artist Sandra Peise uses rotoscopy to turn this into an animated film, an excerpt of which can already be seen on the Internet. So: “Let’s be a lighthouse and much more.” What a motto at this time!
The CD for 15 euros is available here.
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