Dania: Listless – Personal Underground Music Shaped by Hospital Late-Night Work
Besides producing evocative electronic pieces, this Iraqi-born, Spain-based artist Dania also works overnight duties as an emergency doctor. Those nocturnal shifts serve as the inspiration for her new album Listless: all seven tracks were composed and produced in the early hours, and the cover features the spindly flower of the Japanese snake gourd, a species that flowers exclusively after dark. However, you won't find much of the turmoil of her overnight schedule here: instead, the album embodies a quiet calm that is at times euphoric, sometimes uncanny.
Converging at a point between trip-hop, ethereal rock and ambient, with a touch of catchy melodies, the textured songs glide hypnotically, propelled by waves of synths and, as a new element, percussion. A new addition to the artist's typical arrangement, these drums lend a gentle slow-paced kick to a number of the tracks. The shuffling, hazy beat in the track Personal Assistant evokes the 1990s-era bands one group and another, whereas Car Crash Premonition is the closest things come to intense. Written after an disturbing cab ride to her studio one night, it is simultaneously brooding and dizzying, fit for a film montage.
Other songs, including one titled I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s previous work: stripped back and amorphous. The final song, named A Hunger, has a underwater quality, with gurgling and beeping sounds that sound like medical equipment, interwoven with distorted answerphone-style vocals.
The artist's gentle, whispering voice is present through almost the entirety of the album. Its words are hardly discernible as her voice are floating, repeated, layered, sometimes barely there at all. Having been raised in a home where singing was frowned upon, she’s said that it is an activity she’s consistently considered private about. But this is also an inspired choice, enhancing the dream-like atmosphere on this gorgeous, personal record.
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