ILA (BE)

Doors: 19:00

Two years after their debut album 'Ayna', ILA returns with the follow-up album 'Motherland', which makes the band, with Ilayda Cicek at the front, sound bigger and more ambitious than ever before. The album was inspired by Cicek's father and natural elements, which runs as a leitmotif through an album that ultimately is about all of us.

Her father's presence is most palpable in the album's only song in Turkish, “Deniz” — Turkish for 'the sea'. “Deniz” is based on a poem her father wrote about the sea as a metaphor for steadfastness and perseverance.

The first single from the album is called “In My Heart”: an up-tempo indie rock song about holding on to a love that has already burned out — and finding the strength to choose yourself. In that way, it's a song, and an entire album, about all of us. About those who persist even when parts of our heart are missing. It's about the warmth and feeling of belonging that we find again in new places, new love and new hopes.

'Motherland' will be released in late September/October and in autumn the band will embark on their first European tour, where they will visit RUST in Copenhagen and finally end up where it all began: at home at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels.