The Artist Dania: Her Album Listless – Personal Underground Music Inspired by Hospital Night Shifts
Besides producing atmospheric digital pieces, the Baghdad-born, Spain-based musician Dania furthermore serves overnight duties as an emergency doctor. These late-night hours are the influence behind her new album Listless: all 7 tracks were composed and recorded after midnight, while the cover showcases the spindly blossom of the Japanese snake gourd, a species that only blooms after dark. But, you won't find much of the chaos of her late-night routine in this music: rather, the album exudes a quiet calm that is sometimes euphoric, occasionally eerie.
Meeting somewhere amid downtempo, ethereal rock and atmospheric, and a hint of catchy melodies, the textured tracks slink along hypnotically, propelled by waves of synthesizers and, for the first time, drums. An innovative feature to the artist's typical arrangement, they lend a gentle slow-paced rhythm to several of the songs. The shuffling, hazy beat in Personal Assistant recalls the 1990s-era groups one group and another, whereas the song Car Crash Premonition is the nearest things come to intense. Written after an unnerving taxi journey to her workspace late one evening, it is simultaneously contemplative and woozy, ideal for a movie scene.
Additional tracks, such as I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of the artist's previous work: stripped back and amorphous. The closing track, named A Hunger, has a subaquatic feel, with gurgling and pinging electronics that resemble hospital monitors, blended with distorted voicemail-like vocals.
The artist's soft, whispering vocal is present across almost the entirety of the record. Its lyrics are hardly discernible as her vocals are floating, repeated, layered, sometimes almost absent at all. Having been raised in a home where singing was discouraged, she has stated that it is an activity she’s always felt private about. But this is also an brilliant choice, augmenting the dream-like haze on the gorgeous, personal album.
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