„What is a song today? Does it need a distinct melody, rhythm, and chorus? Or are a few piano notes, a synthesiser backdrop, and a voice that hovers between singing, whispering, and shouting enough?
Gołos x Jasinska strip the song down almost to its bare bones. Instead of full arrangements, they leave us with miniatures, repeated arpeggios and short passages in which subtle shifts and micro-changes are paramount. These are songs built more on gestures than on structure – reminiscent of the experiments of Jenny Hval, or Mariam Wallentin, and, in the sparse interweaving of piano and synthesisers, at times evoking a beatless James Blake.
Emilia Gołos builds this music using the piano – including prepared piano – and sparse synthesiser lines. Sometimes, the two instruments blend so seamlessly that it is difficult to tell where the acoustic sound ends and the electronics begin. Zuza Jasinska sings delicately and almost directly, but she also processes her voice, stretches it, or transforms it into a drawn-out, wordless sound.
They therefore do not so much answer the question of what a song is today as test how little of it can remain for it to be still a song.”
(Jakub Knera)