The Artist Dania: Her Album Listless – Intimate Underground Music Shaped by Hospital Late-Night Work
Besides producing atmospheric electronic compositions, this Baghdad-born, Spain-based artist Dania also works overnight duties as an critical care physician. Those late-night hours serve as the inspiration for her new release Listless: each of the seven songs were written and recorded in the early hours, while the cover showcases the spindly flower of the Trichosanthes cucumerina, a plant that flowers exclusively at night. However, there is little trace of the chaos of her late-night routine in this music: instead, the album embodies a serene peacefulness that is sometimes euphoric, sometimes uncanny.
Converging somewhere between downtempo, shoegaze and atmospheric, with a touch of catchy melodies, the textured tracks slink along hypnotically, propelled by washes of synths and, as a new element, percussion. An innovative feature to the artist's usual arrangement, these drums lend a gentle downtempo kick to a number of the songs. Its meandering, hazy rhythm in Personal Assistant evokes the 1990s-era bands one group and another, while the song Car Crash Premonition is the nearest things get to urgent. Written following an disturbing cab ride to her workspace one night, it is both contemplative and woozy, fit for a film montage.
Other tracks, such as one titled I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of the artist's past work: minimalist and formless. The closing track, A Hunger, possesses a subaquatic feel, with gurgling and beeping electronics that sound like hospital monitors, interwoven with altered answerphone-style singing.
Dania’s gentle, murmuring voice is featured through nearly the whole of the record. The lyrics are hardly discernible as her vocals are suspended, looped, stacked, sometimes almost absent at all. Growing up in a household where singing was discouraged, she has stated it’s an activity she has always felt private about. But this is additionally an inspired decision, augmenting the surreal haze on the beautiful, intimate record.
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