The Wings Of The Fly
Duo album, Ralph Heidel & Finn RonsdorfFebruary 2026
How I’d Love It So
Video: Lisa Harres2025
On their duo album The Wings Of The Fly, Ralph Heidel and Finn Ronsdorf unite the vastness of the Allgäu with the depth of the Black Forest - and carry the geographical poles of their childhood to Berlin and all the way out to the sea. Between saxophone, voice, ambient and pop, an insight emerges: the flap of a fly’s wings is enough to set an entire past in motion.
High above a valley stretching out in the morning light, the Allgäu brass band blows its melodies into the sky.
Amid trombones and sweeping alphorn sounds stands the young Ralph Heidel, gazing out over the Allgäu and listening intently to an invisible headwind.
He gathers sounds that do not yet know they will one day become songs.
At the same time, many valleys away, Finn Ronsdorf kneels in the dark Black Forest. The earth is damp and heavy.
Finn digs and digs and buries a wish, a letter, a sentence:
to become a singer.
Perhaps the earth will answer him later. Perhaps it does so in that very moment.
Years pass, until time makes a decision.
Berlin.
No mountains. No forests.
Only concrete that throws back your footsteps, and a sky that knows more neon light than stars.
On the fringes of Berlin's pop culture festival in 2021, they meet for the first time. Ralph, now a successful musician and producer, moving between saxophone, piano, synthesizer, classical commissioned compositions, and major pop and rap productions (including Apsilon, Casper, Bazzazian). And Finn, singing ballads - sometimes soul, sometimes blues, sometimes an expressive flare that refuses to be tamed. Die Zeit calls him “one of the most exciting artists in the country”.
From here on, external circumstances fall into place. Their paths cross again and again; they run into each other by chance at night; Ralph temporarily lives in Finn’s room; a letter comes into being that will later appear on the album's artwork. A first gig in Munich - just saxophone and voice, reduced to the bare essentials.
These are the beginnings of a duo.
Together they begin to build an album that explores the past - The Wings Of The Fly.
Kißlegg and Oberkirch become mythical places within it, half memory, half dream.
The lyrics move between musician fathers who roam through childhood like wolves (Father, You’re Fine), and friendships that bridge distances. On How I’d Love It So, Finn calls out to the Zürichberg, to a friend in need of comfort. Over the course, Ralph and Finn become the guardians of a dying lamb (Little Lambkin), listen as the almost inaudible flapping of fly wings turn into a love song (The Wings Of The Fly), and dedicate an acappella sax-voice track to a plum (Devotional Song For The Plum). Amid all this, Lisa Harres appears on To You My Hand, lifting the earthy vocals to celestial heights. Later, they travel with Lisa, who is a musician and filmmaker, to the sea, to Amrum. The three shoot a 16mm film, drawing on surrealism, Agnès Varda, and Pina Bausch. And again and again, between sea, city, Allgäu and Black Forest, the realization surfaces that distance sometimes reveals home more clearly than closeness itself (I Won’t Even).
Most of the recordings are made at Funkhaus Berlin. Some take place in Ralph’s living room, where it sounds of wood, cables, and warmth.
An album grows, full of longing and acceptance, oscillating between the rustic, ambient, jazz, and alt-pop.
Text: Leah Luna Winzely