Dania: Her Album Listless – Intimate Underground Music Shaped by Hospital Late-Night Work
Besides crafting evocative electronic compositions, the Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based artist Dania furthermore serves overnight duties as an emergency physician. These nocturnal hours serve as the inspiration behind her new album Listless: each of the seven songs were written and produced after midnight, while the artwork showcases the spindly flower of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that flowers exclusively after dark. However, there is little trace of the chaos of her late-night routine here: rather, the album embodies a serene peacefulness that is sometimes euphoric, occasionally eerie.
Meeting at a point amid trip-hop, shoegaze and ambient, with a touch of pop, the layered tracks glide hypnotically, driven by washes of synths and, for the first time, percussion. An innovative feature to the artist's typical setup, these drums lend a soft downtempo kick to several of the songs. Its shuffling, hazy beat in Personal Assistant evokes the late-90s groups Scala and Seefeel, whereas the song Car Crash Premonition is the closest things get to intense. Written after an unnerving cab ride to her studio one night, it is both brooding and woozy, ideal for a movie scene.
Other tracks, including I Know That and another called Write My Name, are more reminiscent of Dania’s previous output: minimalist and formless. The closing track, named A Hunger, has a underwater feel, with gurgling and beeping sounds that sound like medical equipment, interwoven with altered answerphone-style singing.
The artist's soft, whispering vocal is featured across almost the entirety of the record. Its lyrics are hardly discernible as her vocals are suspended, looped, layered, at points barely there at all. Having been raised in a home where singing was discouraged, she’s said that it is something she’s always felt personal. Yet this is additionally an brilliant decision, augmenting the surreal haze on this beautiful, personal record.
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