"You Need to Create Relationships Between Sounds"
Zoe Polanski About Her New Album, "Loveloops"
With her new album "Loveloops", musician and composer Zoe Polanski deepens her exploration of repetition, texture, and emotional resonance. Known for crafting dreamlike soundscapes that balance fragility with intensity, Polanski embraces loops as both structure and meditation—inviting listeners into music that is at once intimate and expansive.
Following the international acclaim of her debut Violent Flowers, "Loveloops" presents a bolder, more direct approach, weaving between shimmering shoegaze, delicate ambient layers, and moments of luminous melancholy. Written during a period of personal transition, the album carries a raw sense of reflection, while still reaching outward toward cinematic horizons.**
Adding another dimension to this release, "Loveloops" also inspired a luminous remix from marine eyes—an artist previously featured here on Sounds Vegan. Their sonic dialogue highlights the album's openness to reinterpretation and further underlines Polanski's place within a vibrant, evolving experimental community.
I spoke with Zoe about the origins of "Loveloops", the power of repetition, collaboration, and how her music continues to seek signals from beyond the everyday.
Anne: Hi Zoe! How are you? How is Berlin? I heard you just moved here!
Zoe: I'm good! Berlin is great—it's just different, you know? The pace here lets me work in ways I couldn't before. More space to think, literally and figuratively.
Anne: "Loveloops" feels intimate and cosmic at once. You're always moving between repetition, texture, and emotional release—which is very enjoyable. What was the very first seed or inspiration that set this album in motion for you?
"I wanted to explore making music"
Zoe: After "Violent Flowers", I had all these scattered sketches I wanted to develop into songs.
But when I came up with "Rosemary," something clicked—I realized that my practice of creating single textures, these very short loops that captivate me, was never really about building blocks at all. It was the overall form and meaning. I'd been leaning toward this minimal approach since I started making music, and suddenly I wanted to explore it fully instead of fighting it.
Anne: You've mentioned how loops and repetition have been central to your process. On "Loveloops", you seem to let repetition stand more starkly than before—what made you want to embrace that directness this time?
Zoe: I realized the loop had become a tool for looking inward rather than outward. Before, I thought I was using the loop as a building block—something I'd write the song with, use it to build, to express, to expand. But working on this album, I realized that's not what it was at all. I found this potential for the loop to be like an acoustic mirror, reflecting parts of myself back. An inner prism to explore my own mind with. It's more like discovery than creation.
Anne: The track "Rosemary" really stands out with its delicate unravelling of a loop. Could you share how that piece developed and what it meant to you personally as you wrote it?
"The track 'Rosemary' made me think about an album"
Zoe: "Rosemary" was the first track that made me think—okay, here's an idea for a new album. I played with the loop endlessly, adding different bass and vocal ideas like I always do. I recorded the entire search process with a Zoom recorder, then listened back for moments that stood out.
When we were producing it, my co-producer suggested dismantling the loop as the song progresses, which felt perfect—like watching some image you have of yourself slowly dissolve, and that being okay.
Anne: Some pieces, like "Symmetries" and "Too Slow", feel drenched in melancholy, while others like "Can I Have You" or "Vacations" shine with light and shoegaze energy. How did you balance these contrasting moods across the record?
Zoe: To me, all the tracks are both moods all the time. I never feel a distinction when I write.
Anne: You wrote "Loveloops" while being pregnant. Did this life transition shape the emotional tone of the album in ways you didn't expect?
"I felt more confident"
Zoe: I felt more confident to write and produce this musical signature of myself as minimally and roughly as felt right. For the first time, I trusted that if the music felt complete when I played it in my bedroom, that's exactly how it should be—minimal and rough. Being pregnant made me more curious about my limitations instead of trying to hide them. More at ease with what I lack, or at least more interested in exploring those spaces.
Anne: You've described music-making as a search for "signals from another place." Did you feel like you found new "signals" while creating this record compared to your earlier work?
Zoe: I feel that on this record, the signals are coming more from home than from another place.
Anne: Collaboration has been essential in your journey, especially with Aviad Zinemanas as producer. How did his input shape the sound and structure of "Loveloops"?
"Music is the construction of experienced time"
Zoe: Aviad has this beautiful ear and sensitivity for the materials he's working with. The materials here are so raw, but he makes these small changes that are really powerful. I know I can trust him to make the track evolve in interesting ways, to expand the experience without losing what's essential.
Anne: There's a strong sense of architecture in the way the songs are built—layers, loops, dismantling, and reconstruction. Do you see parallels between composing music and constructing physical or cinematic spaces, given your background in film scoring?
Zoe: Music is the construction of experienced time. For a long time, I thought about it like building a small room—wanting everything added to be precise and allow air to flow. But now I think talking about music in physical space concepts is limiting. Acoustic space—the space we hear—has different characteristics. It's not linear but circular; there's simultaneity, no hierarchy or categories. My loops are more like manifestations of that acoustic space. How can my construction of experienced time bring forward these beautiful characteristics—allow non-linearity, non-teleological movement, moments experienced as pure present without looking toward a climax or solution?
Anne: As someone rooted in both ambient and post-rock traditions, how do you navigate between abstraction and song form when writing?
"The abstract forms fascinate me"
Zoe: I'm interested in moving more toward abstract forms. It's hard because I'm so used to song structures from my musical background. When I was working on this album two years ago, I was still working with familiar song forms. Now I'm experimenting with more abstract approaches. Once there's no lyrical structure or familiar chord progressions, you need to create relationships between sounds that are interesting enough to sustain themselves.
Anne: marine eyes created a remix of your work. What was it like to hear your compositions reimagined through her lens?
Zoe: So much fun! Her remix made me really happy—I could totally feel her feeling me, you know? It was like hearing my music through a friend's ears.
Anne: This is exactly how I met Cynthia (Bernard, marine eyes). I can totally picture that! Did you and her discuss any ideas beforehand, or was it more of a trust exercise in letting another artist interpret your material freely?
Zoe: Total trust! That's the only way it can work. I've been really grateful to have amazing musicians remix tracks from this album—marine eyes, and also Lawrence did a remix for "Broken Happy." I feel lucky to get their interpretations, to see how their artistic sensitivity meets the material.
Anne: Your earlier album "Violent Flowers" was celebrated by the blogs. In your view, how does "Loveloops" expand or diverge from that artistic chapter?
Zoe: The main choice I made in "Loveloops" that was different from "Violent Flowers" was to give in to the repetition completely.
Anne: You've performed alongside artists like Tame Impala and Swans, yet your solo work thrives in a very different space—dreamlike, intimate, and layered. How do these larger live experiences influence your own music, if at all?
Zoe: I've played as support for these artists and felt happy to have those experiences, but I can't say they influenced my music much.
Anne: Many listeners have described your sound as ethereal, almost cinematic. If "Loveloops" were a film, what kind of story or imagery would you imagine it telling?
"When writing film music, I never think about the story"
Zoe: When I write for film, I don't think about story at all—unlike what my teachers taught me. I only think about the space of the film, the texture, and how that space resonates inside me as a viewer. I'm interested in my visceral reaction—how these colors, landscapes, faces make me feel. The grain, sharpness, or gloss. I react to texture with texture. As an artist, I understand resonance more than narrative. "Loveloops" resonates in a dark space hanging between earth and sky. There are lights and people and life, but everything is floating in the air.
Anne: Looking ahead, do you see yourself continuing to explore loops and minimalist structures, or do you feel the next step in your journey might take a different form altogether?
Zoe: As I mentioned, I'm interested in longer, more abstract forms where I can explore acoustic relationships better. Forms that don't rely on familiar song structures at all.
You can already listen to "Loveloops" and dive deeper into her sound universe via Bandcamp—a highly recommended journey for all those who wish to get lost in luminous loops and subtle emotional landscapes.
Anne: A heartfelt thank you for sharing your thoughts and insights with me and my readers! Wishing you all the best for your plans!
Zoe: Thank you! It's been really nice to talk through these ideas.
