Mostly the thing with the "Power Nap" goes so wrong. You lie down for a productive rest day and never get up again. In the end, you did not manage to get out of hand for the night in the pub. A top shot for a tender-silty guitar record, for a coming-of-age album about big plans and emotional exhaustion.
The musician Ilgen-Nur must disappoint us: "Power Nap" is her debut album, but it is, although you hastily attached the "Slacker" label attached, not from lying down. "I think the pun more interesting," says Ilgen -Only in the interview. "'Power' and 'nap' are crass terms, and I feel they describe my music very well." You, you want to complete, maybe also: Even if she says "blatant", it sounds a bit as if you have to think of a shrug.
Ilgen-Nur Borali from the vicinity of Stuttgart needed two years and a cassette to become the bedroom musician to the songwriter, the German indie scene so much desired: one in the young tradition of musicians like Courtney Barnett, Snail Mail Mitski, Nilüfer Yanya or Stella Donnelly. They may not find a completely new approach to guitar music, but alternatives to the stories of the white hetero-boys who dominated the genre for a long time.
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Photo gallery: A songwriter gets upThe Englishwoman Yanya resembles Ilgen-Nur also in terms of vocal style amazing: Both have this dark, biscuit-soft voice that often just slams past the Gelangweiltklingen. "No Emotions" was the name of Ilgen-Nur's first EP released on tape in 2017. On the cover, she looked properly spooked. A first indication of how her stage persona is to be read. "Many do not understand why I do not make so many announcements at concerts, why I always put on a straight face and do not have the best mood on stage," says Ilgen-Nur. "It's emotionally exhausting to perform songs that are part of your life."
The provocatively neutral expression, which she rarely shuts off in conversation, is Ilgen-Nur's biggest provocation: because she reveals her worries and insecurities - and she does not want to give everything to the world. Because she takes out everything to be in control, but still soft and permeable.
A few weeks ago, Ilgen-Nur moved from Hamburg to Berlin. What you noticed immediately in the new city are the trash cans: they look red in Hamburg, orange in Berlin. She goes through the day carefully, says Ilgen-Nur about herself. In her songs, she negotiates the big issues on a small scale. Ilgen-Nur sings about milk she has not bought, and jewelry she leaves in the bathroom of another person. Ilgen-Nur is sitting in a bed in the middle of rumpled sheets on the cover of the album, soft sunlight falls through the window. A place she feels comfortable needs a good, comfortable bed. And a big window or a balcony, as a reference to the outside world.
So it makes sense that many songs on "Power Nap" make you feel like you're about to start the journey in Ilgen-Nur's flat, and finally follow it out into the world. Even if the trip to New York, she starts at the breakfast table with toast and honey and butter, as in the single "In My Head".
While the flight to America remains a dream in the song, she really wanders through Manhattan in the video. At her side: a friend from New York, to whom the song is dedicated. Like many important people in her life, Ilgen-Nur has met her on the internet. Ilgen-Nur was born in 1996. She does not know pre-digital times, loneliness already. She was an outsider at school.
Later she moved to the Black Forest, had barren jobs, finally went to Hamburg and dipped into the music scene of the city. At some point she asked herself the question: If every idiot here has a band, why do I just write my songs for the drawer? When Ilgen-Nur put her song "Cool" on the web, everything went very fast. The Leipzig cassette label Sunny Tapes came forward to release their debut EP. She went on tour in the opening act of Tocotronic, eventually recorded her first album.
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Ilgen-Only
Power nap
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Power Nap Records
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Max Rieger, singer of the band The Nerves and favorite producer of the German indie offspring, helped "Power Nap" to his sound. The new songs do not sound as pragmatic as Ilgen-Nurs early songs, even songs produced by Rieger, but sometimes floating, sometimes more powerful, without forfeiting the rumpled-sheet feeling. Her pointed lines still revolve around the inside rather than the outside.
Ilgen-Nur says it gets on her nerves that every woman with a guitar in her hand must have everything about feminism on the screen. "The topic should not matter to anyone, but no one should be forced to talk about it all the time." She does not force herself. That their song "Silver Future" was named after a Berlin queer bar, that the sung love interest in Ilgen-Nur is a "she", all this is easy to ignore.
But not what tremendous powers the woman with the look of the shoulder can release when hurt. "You break my heart, I'll break your spine," she threatens in the song "You're A Mess". It's an announcement: Even from the window you can scream pretty loud in the world.
