The time is 6:14.
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[6.14]
Alfred Soto: It plays as if this Ukrainian group foregrounded the mysterious vocals, ah, buried in Burial productions. With the mystery dispelled, what’s left is a well lit VIP bar.
[4]
Iain Mew: The clean synths and spreading vocals recall iamamiwhoami. More than anything they’ve done, though, this is an entry into the kind of gorgeous stillness that I’ve been thinking of as suspended animation pop since “110%”. Even as Onuka specifically oppose that by using it to sigh “I’m sorry I could not freeze time” it still works: a glimpse of what was desired, swept away as the beats increase.
[8]
Ramzi Awn: I’m a sucker for snaps, and synths that go bleep in the night. The bass is in the right place, and the mood is right. But “Time” could have set itself apart from the ongoing deluge of European synthpop to greater effect.
[5]
Micha Cavaseno: She can’t freeze time but she sure can use up a bunch of it with the same tired piano, vocal pitchshifting and Blakeian sea-sickness synths. My god, what I’d kill for an experimental singer-songwriter who was actually y’know, experimenting.
[2]
Scott Mildenhall: Plain and plaintive statements about the immutable impermanence of time are a start and a half, but behind them is a whirl of thought, quietly brought to mind by an intermittent, intermittently quickening pulse and a stream of individual elements flying in and out of its orbit. Altogether the effect is similar to, if less bleary than The Streets’ galling “Blinded By The Lights”.
[7]
Will Adams: “Time” displaces your very sense of it; the synth arpeggio crosses barlines, the bass moves glacially, and the song’s structure unfurls like a flower. It’s the same loss of time experienced when lying on a bedroom floor in utter resignation, the lamp softly burning even though it’s 3 AM.
[9]
Juana Giaimo: When I hear repeated the line “I’m sorry I could not freeze time” I receive two opposite sensations. On one hand, everything is moving out of its place, as juxtaposed images lead us to the future. But on the other, the delicate vocals and the glacial synths makes it seem as if the song is stuck in the same place. For a few moments we may believe that Onuka was able to freeze time and everything could stay in our comfort zone, but the song finishes, and we are once again faced by the always unpredictable time.
[8]