MNE

Description

Raw and incisive, sensitive and poetic. Nikola has a visceral intensity that comes through just as much in his lyrics as in his delivery. His debut album MNE (the three-letter country code for Montenegro) is a record of tumultuous introspection, driven by a search for his roots and identity, between France and Montenegro. “I dreamed of Paris and now I dream of Montenegro, of Podgorica, of the peaceful village where my family lives among the fields and mountains that flow into the Adriatic Sea. Today, the country of my ancestors, which I know fairly little about, since I did not live there long enough, seems to be calling me.” The 23-year-old singer, songwriter, composer and producer, discovered at the Inouïs du Printemps de Bourges, blends spoken poetry, questions and observations to open wide his intimate pages to collective history. He reflects on transmission, or the lack of it, within a genealogy marked by displacement and a history full of gaps. From magmatic swells to the tradition of French chanson, from urban breakthroughs to modern Balkan sonic incursions, from enveloping softness to bursts of anger, from a spoken voice to one filtered through the machine. Last summer, Nikola traveled across the Balkans in a van. A way of seeing with his own eyes what he had projected into this record. And of realizing that, without a doubt, he has come a long way.