Photo by Taike De Wilde – @bytaike
Home is supposed to be the place where all the pieces of yourself fit together. But what happens when some of those pieces are scattered across countries, generations and lives you never got to live?
That question sits at the heart of Motherland, the sophomore album from Antwerp-based ILA, a record that turns inherited displacement and the search for belonging into something as emotionally expansive as it is sonically ferocious.
For frontwoman Ilayda Cicek, the album’s origins are deeply personal. Her father left Turkey for Belgium in the late 1980s, leaving behind not just a country but a language, family and dreams that couldn’t necessarily follow him. Motherland explores the emotional inheritance of that decision, recognising that migration doesn’t simply change the person who leaves. Its consequences ripple through generations.
Musically, ILA approach that complexity with an equally restless spirit. Produced by Mikko Gordon, the album moves between abrasive alt-rock, post-punk urgency and moments of delicate atmosphere, rarely settling comfortably into one emotional or sonic space.
Opening track ‘Yuva’ establishes a sense of mystery before ‘What I Need’ and ‘Sorry’ introduce the band’s more confrontational instincts. Guitars grow increasingly jagged, rhythms become insistent, and Cicek’s commanding vocal presence cuts through the intensity. There’s something particularly effective about the contrast between the music’s physical aggression and the vulnerability underneath it.
Elsewhere, ‘She Holds Me’ finds a compelling middle ground between the angular indie-rock energy of The Strokes and the dreamier textures associated with Beach House. ‘In Blue’ offers a more intimate perspective, allowing atmosphere and restraint to communicate what volume cannot, while closing track ‘Waves’ dissolves into a dreamlike haze.
Those shifts give Motherland its identity. The album doesn’t simply alternate between loud and quiet; it uses those contrasts to explore the different ways people carry absence. Sometimes loss manifests as anger, sometimes longing, and sometimes as something considerably harder to articulate.
The record also marks an important evolution in the band’s creative process. Written for the first time as a four-piece, with Sam Smeets and Stynen developing much of the music, Cicek was able to concentrate more fully on the lyrics. Her decision to take a suitcase of guitar demos to Turkey to write reflects the album’s central tension beautifully: travelling towards a place that holds part of your history, while recognising that history cannot be fully recovered.
There’s a similar sense of movement in the album’s recurring natural imagery, partly inspired by Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky. Water becomes an especially fitting metaphor for identity, something constantly moving, carrying traces of where it has been without ever remaining entirely unchanged.
Following 2024’s Ayna, Motherland feels like the work of a band growing more confident in its contradictions. The visceral energy that has established ILA’s formidable live reputation remains intact, but there’s greater space here for atmosphere, reflection and emotional ambiguity.
Ultimately, Motherland isn’t about finding one definitive place to call home. It’s about recognising that identity is assembled from everything we inherit, everything we leave behind and everything we discover along the way.
ILA don’t attempt to put all those missing pieces back together. Instead, they create something powerful from the spaces between them.
Perhaps belonging isn’t always about returning to where you came from. Sometimes it’s about learning to live with everywhere you’ve been.
