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Songs We Love: Alina Baraz & Galimatias, 'Unfold'

Producer Galimatias (pictured here) and singer Alina Baraz just released their new EP, <em>Urban Flora</em>.
Courtesy of the artist
Producer Galimatias (pictured here) and singer Alina Baraz just released their new EP, Urban Flora.

Depending on your mood, the thought of love can either make you feel weightless or like you're drowning. Singer-songwriter Alina Baraz and Danish producer Galimatias have decided they want you to experience both — and it's a damn good feeling. "Unfold," the final track of their new joint EP, Urban Flora, is an underwater waltz between vulnerable voice and genre-bending sound design. It writhes just outside the bounds of R&B, where it joins the rest of Urban Flora in a slow-burning dedication to an all-consuming love.

Since their introduction — which came via SoundCloud after Baraz penned a song to a Galimatias beat — the singer and producer have taken care to present themselves as deliberate creators who focus on an experience that feels gentle, but doesn't shy away from contrast. On "Unfold," Baraz, an L.A. artist by way of Cleveland, sweetly slices through her collaborator's hard-hitting, amorphous production. She favors a hushed style of singing, and leans on Galimatias to wield her voice as an instrument, which he does gladly. He finds the current running through Baraz's voice with ease, and builds around it. By the end, he's created a dense alternate universe, where he's free to modulate Baraz by tone and pitch as she repeats the theme of the EP: "This kind of love, we can't control."

Urban Flora is out now on Ultra Music.

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Kiana Fitzgerald is a freelance music journalist, cultural critic, and DJ. She writes for the world from deep in the heart of Texas.