- A stunning aural lament that combines centuries of Eastern European traditions.
- Community Of Grieving is a lament, an expression of grief through art. Unsound, a celebrated festival in Poland, first commissioned this 23-minute piece for their online-only 2020 edition and revealed it as a collective "audio ritual" to be experienced with other people. The artists, Zosia Hołubowska and Julia Giertz, wanted to ease the isolation caused by the pandemic itself as well as by the process of mourning the loss of everything that the pandemic took away. In March this year, as the Russian Federation resumed its war in Ukraine with new force, the festival has formally released the work as an EP.
Hołubowska and Giertz both grew up in Catholic households, drawing inspiration for Community Of Grieving from vespers, an evening prayer service. But this EP isn't a literal performance of the liturgy. Hołubowska (AKA Mala Herba), whose vocals we hear on the EP, combines the Christian religious tradition with the mysticism of Slavic pagan music and the white voice, a folk singing technique common all throughout Eastern Europe. This combination of influences has become Hołubowska's signature style, as heard on their 2021 LP, Demonologia.
Beyond sorrowful chants and deep drone, the artists express a variety of feelings that come with loss. The ascending harsh noise resonates with anger and, at the midpoint, four whole minutes of deep and uneven breathing channel a panicky sort of anxiety. The second half of the EP includes ghostly hisses—as if sampled by someone making a journal entry with a pencil—as well as echoey wails representing the sort of grief that can subside but never truly goes away. In Community of Grieving, Hołubowska and Giertz use music to explore strong emotions and the ways to live with loss, holding the space for others to do the same.
Tracklist01. Community Of Grieving