GIDEON UNNA & Kaley Halperin explore the question of the heart with “What Is Love”
Courtesy of GIDEON UNNA & Kaley Halperin
GIDEON UNNA’s new single “What Is Love,” the second release from his forthcoming album and his second collaboration with singer Kaley Halperin, comes in like a gentle question, uttered from a dark room. This is an open-handed search for something we all pursue without knowing precisely what it looks like.
Constructed upon UNNA’s signature mix of acoustic grounding and modern production detail, the track exhales with restraint. Guitars and bass played by GIDEON UNNA keep the floor warm, and Yoav Asif’s keyboards and Oren Tzur’s violins provide a gentle lift which never takes away from the intimacy at the center. It’s a song of the long and slow disarmament.
Halperin’s voice is the pivot of that spell as calm, unstressed, and full of human air. UNNA wraps Halperin’s voice in Yotam Botner’s patient drums, Lior Medan’s woven MIDI programming, and the quiet precision of Ben Israeli’s vocal capture and Lyn Barzilai’s lyrical polish, all on exposure without spectacle.
Production is done by Medan and GIDEON, while Yoram Vazan’s mix and master give the track its final clarity. Even the cover art, drawn from UNNA and Halperin’s own imagery, reinforces the two artists who reveal their faces only enough to invite, but never to make plain. “What Is Love” exemplifies the courage to ask in plain voice, and that is its quiet genius.
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The official music writer on Landon Buford.
