Dania: Listless – Personal Underground Music Shaped by Hospital Late-Night Work
In addition to crafting evocative electronic pieces, this Baghdad-born, Spain-based artist Dania furthermore works night shifts as an critical care physician. These late-night hours serve as the inspiration for her new release Listless: each of the 7 songs were written and recorded after midnight, while the artwork showcases the slender flower of the Trichosanthes cucumerina, a species that only blooms after dark. However, you won't find much of the turmoil of her late-night schedule in this music: instead, the record exudes a quiet calm that is sometimes euphoric, occasionally eerie.
Meeting at a point amid trip-hop, shoegaze and ambient, with a touch of pop, the textured songs glide hypnotically, propelled by washes of synthesizers and, for the first time, percussion. An innovative feature to Dania’s typical arrangement, these drums lend a gentle downtempo rhythm to several of the tracks. Its shuffling, hazy rhythm in the track Personal Assistant evokes the late-90s groups one group and another, whereas Car Crash Premonition is the nearest the album come to urgent. Written after an unnerving taxi journey to her studio one night, it is both brooding and dizzying, ideal for a film montage.
Additional songs, such as one titled I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s previous work: minimalist and formless. The final song, named A Hunger, has a underwater quality, with gurgling and beeping sounds that resemble hospital equipment, blended with distorted answerphone-style singing.
The artist's soft, whispering vocal is present across nearly the whole of the record. The lyrics are almost imperceptible as her vocals are suspended, repeated, layered, at points barely there entirely. Having been raised in a home where vocal expression was frowned upon, she’s said it’s an activity she has consistently considered private about. But this is additionally an inspired choice, enhancing the dream-like atmosphere on the beautiful, intimate record.
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