In the artist's words:

The first evening at the fair, the rollercoaster rides between the candy floss and the creepy cabinet, flashing towards the starry sky, people shouting, laughing, throwing colorful balls at aluminum cans. And in the middle of it all is a person in her early 20s who is aware of every detail of this scenery and much more besides. She sees and hears and sniffs and has the feeling that she wants to be everything at the same time. To have to be. Loud and quiet, fragile, exhilarated and full of mental leaps into a distant future. "it's hard to be a blizzard" - it's exhausting to be someone who has never existed before and to do it as well as possible.

This or something similar would probably describe the setting and mood of indie artist Juli Gilde's debut album. The melancholy and dark blue, quiet restraint of her first two EPs have disappeared. Instead, here is an indie pop record that is louder, bigger and bolder than anything the Berlin-based artist has released before. Shining in light green, blue, pink, yellow and snow-white, July's songs are diverse, chaotic and without a common thread. And despite all the hustle and bustle, they are still pretty wonderful in a funny way. Just like life in your early 20s. Of course there are the obligatory heartbreak songs and imaginary love songs. But there is always a lightness that runs through the album: Whether it's music box-like guitar arpeggio or murmuring, highly nostalgic synth, that feeling of your chest lifting off comes through everywhere, like when you were a child marveling at something very special. Held together by a voice that, once heard, doesn't want to disappear from your ears. "I write about things that occupy me and try to make my inner life understandable to my fellow human beings. These are actually thoughts that everyone has at some point: What's actually going on in my head, why do my brain and heart so often work against each other, why can't I cope with the world and its people?" says Juli about the motifs in her songs.

On "it ́s hard to be a blizzard", several people deliberately contributed to the production. The diversity of the sounds is also reflected in the range of contributors. From newcomer producer Chris Trumpf (Metty, Meller, Eala) to Jeremias Heimbach, Markus Wilfinger, David Jürgens and former Wir sind Helden member Jens Eckhoff. It was as if many people had painted a huge, colorful panorama together. Chris Trumpf, Juli's main producer for the album, then polished everything again, worked his magic on it and, together with the artist, created this wonderful, indie-like, sometimes somewhat obscure sound. Juli herself prefers to listen to the music of German and English-speaking indie greats such as Wir sind Helden, Phoebe Bridgers, Die Höchste Eisenbahn, Arlo Parks, Betterov and Boygenius. These bands and artists were definitely inspirations for the sound and aesthetics during production. So the influences are there, but what sets the record apart from these projects are above all Juli Gilde's lyrics, which are often described from the outside as very unique or strange. In any case, hardly anyone in this country currently writes lyrics like her. There are lines and whole passages on the album that seem almost hermetic: If you don't know what the thought behind the lyrics or the story is, in all likelihood you won't find out through simple interpretation.

"Hallo" (a collage of years of nightmares and experiences from difficult, dark times) or "Ein Lada steht im Parkverbot" (a homage to the late author Wolfgang Herrndorf, who found his very own way into the plot of the lyrics) are such songs. In addition, pop hits such as "Rosarot", "Wieso eigentlich" (a little nod to "Nur ein Wort" by Wir sind Helden), "Gleis 13" (the biggest heartbreak song on the album) or the coldly radiant "Nichts tut gut", a feature with their friend, the wonderfully punky artist NIKRA, sparkle almost naturally.

"These songs that I've written and partly co-produced over the last two and a half years, the almost 40 minutes of music and lyrics and sounds, from dinosaur screams to a tuning orchestra to old funk radios... at this moment, as I write this text, I realize how much this chaos still fits together, euphoric, panicked, always on the move and at the same time held, like a snowstorm, in one of those glass balls you can buy at the Christmas market or carnival. Yup, it ́s freaking hard to be a blizzard, but maybe we can actually manage that quite well, at least with this record."