The Artist Dania: Listless – Intimate Experimental Music Shaped by Medical Night Shifts
In addition to producing evocative digital pieces, this Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based artist Dania also serves overnight duties as an emergency physician. Those late-night hours are the influence behind her latest album Listless: all 7 tracks were written and recorded after midnight, while the artwork showcases the slender blossom of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that flowers exclusively at night. But, there is little trace of the turmoil of her overnight routine in this music: rather, the record embodies a serene peacefulness that is sometimes euphoric, occasionally uncanny.
Converging somewhere between downtempo, ethereal rock and ambient, and a hint of catchy melodies, the textured songs slink along hypnotically, propelled by washes of synths and, as a new element, drums. An innovative feature to Dania’s usual setup, they lend a gentle downtempo rhythm to several of the tracks. The meandering, murky rhythm in the track Personal Assistant recalls the late-90s bands Scala and Seefeel, whereas Car Crash Premonition is the nearest the album come to urgent. Composed following an disturbing taxi journey to her studio one night, it is both brooding and dizzying, ideal for a movie scene.
Additional songs, such as I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s past work: minimalist and amorphous. The closing track, named A Hunger, possesses a subaquatic quality, with gurgling and pinging sounds that sound like medical equipment, blended with distorted answerphone-style vocals.
Dania’s soft, whispering vocal is present through nearly the whole of the album. The words are hardly discernible as her vocals are floating, repeated, layered, sometimes barely there at all. Having been raised in a home where singing was discouraged, she has stated that it is an activity she has consistently considered private about. But it’s additionally an inspired decision, enhancing the dream-like haze on the gorgeous, personal album.
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