Tendertwin is the musical moniker of Bilge Nur Yilmaz. A self-described, “musical nomad”, Bilge was born and raised in Istanbul, “soaking up Turkey’s rich musical heritage from the lapping tides of the Black Sea and Mediterranean”. After spending time in Philadelphia and London, Bilge is now studying for a Masters degree in Music Performance at Oxford, alongside her burgeoning music career.
She remembers multiple busking incidents from her early travels where she would test out a few originals under medieval arcades of small European towns — but for a first legitimate show, she remembers being surrounded by the flow of warm bodies in the living room of a communal house she later ended up living in. She says “We would put on these acoustic tasters for the larger community at my university in suburban Philly, and I was performing to a group of students who would sing along as a choir of mumbled harmonies towards the end of the set. It was pure magic.”
She says that “I take inspiration from bits of different things. Nature in all its glory can take all the credit, or a stranger’s texts I glean into on the underground. I have to cite Pablo Neruda, Rainer Maria Rilke, and T.S. Eliot as undeniable literary influences. Compositionally, it’s probably a great mix — from icons like Nick Drake or Joan Armatrading to modern masters like Meredith Monk or Caroline Shaw. It’s here and there, it’s now but then. Expect confusion, twenty-three vocal channels, a bit of despair, and somewhat nautical drama?” to this question. I think I’m going to stick with that.
After marking 2021 with a series of well-received singles, Tendertwin released ‘Plastik’. Discussing the inspiration behind Plastik, Bilge describes it as, “fighting a battle between organic and feigned, and I’m always changing sides: whether played out in a relationship between two humans, or between modern humans and the Earth“. The track seeks to mirror the push and pull between the organic and robotic, the luxurious acoustic folk put through an almost industrial production, the layered vocals acting as what she describes as, “a congregation of artificial voices in your head – maybe a reminder of how mass-produced your emotions are“. Musically, it’s a real masterclass in genre-blurring, combining some of the swooping atmospherics of Florence And The Machine with the more subtly bruising qualities of Bat For Lashes or Cross Record. Bilge has spoken of Tendertwin as, “a compilation of my stories made in transit”, a collection of thoughts on people, places and her ever-wandering soul, which put in front of a microphone seems to come alive in a blur of amazingly vivid sound.
In July 2024 she released a new EP ‘Asking’ She describes it as follows. “You can expect to hear demented tales of water, lots of strings, my newborn niece, 19 different languages, the ebb and flow of things past and present — Ship Argo has many stories-turned-songs I compiled in transit, whilst trying to figure out my time and place in relation to whatever’s around me. The EP takes its title from the mythological Greek ship which is said to be the first ship to sail the seas as mentioned in Argonautica. The wood itself imbued the ship with magical powers, such as the ability to speak and produce its own prophecies. This collection of songs is my ship— these songs were vessels that carried me, and kept me safe over the past few years when I was always moving. “
