Dania: Listless – Personal Underground Music Shaped by Medical Night Shifts
Besides producing atmospheric digital pieces, this Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based artist Dania furthermore works overnight duties as an critical care doctor. Those nocturnal shifts are the influence for her latest release Listless: each of the seven songs were written and recorded after midnight, while the artwork features the spindly flower of the Trichosanthes cucumerina, a plant that only blooms after dark. However, you won't find much of the chaos of her late-night routine here: instead, the record embodies a quiet calm that is sometimes blissful, occasionally eerie.
Meeting at a point amid downtempo, ethereal rock and atmospheric, and a hint of catchy melodies, the textured songs slink along dreamily, propelled by waves of synths and, for the first time, drums. An innovative feature to the artist's typical arrangement, they lend a gentle slow-paced kick to a number of the songs. The meandering, murky rhythm in Personal Assistant evokes the late-90s bands Scala and Seefeel, while Car Crash Premonition is the closest things come to urgent. Composed following an disturbing cab ride to her workspace late one evening, it is both contemplative and dizzying, fit for a movie scene.
Other tracks, such as one titled I Know That and another called Write My Name, are more reminiscent of the artist's past work: stripped back and formless. The closing track, named A Hunger, possesses a subaquatic feel, with bubbling and beeping electronics that sound like medical monitors, interwoven with altered voicemail-like vocals.
Dania’s gentle, murmuring vocal is present across nearly the whole of the album. Its lyrics are hardly discernible as her voice are suspended, looped, stacked, sometimes almost absent at all. Having been raised in a household where vocal expression was frowned upon, she has stated it’s an activity she has always felt private about. Yet it’s also an inspired choice, enhancing the surreal atmosphere on this beautiful, personal record.
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