Dania: Listless – Intimate Underground Pop Inspired by Medical Night Shifts
Besides crafting evocative electronic pieces, the Baghdad-born, Spain-based musician Dania also works night shifts as an critical care doctor. These late-night hours serve as the inspiration for her latest album Listless: each of the 7 songs were written and produced in the early hours, and the artwork features the spindly flower of the Trichosanthes cucumerina, a plant that flowers exclusively after dark. But, there is little trace of the turmoil of her late-night schedule in this music: rather, the album exudes a serene calm that is sometimes euphoric, occasionally eerie.
Meeting somewhere between downtempo, ethereal rock and ambient, with a touch of catchy melodies, the textured songs glide hypnotically, driven by waves of synths and, for the first time, drums. A new addition to Dania’s usual setup, these drums lend a gentle slow-paced kick to a number of the tracks. The meandering, hazy rhythm in Personal Assistant evokes the 1990s-era groups one group and another, while the song Car Crash Premonition is the nearest the album come to intense. Composed following an unnerving taxi journey to her studio late one evening, it is both brooding and dizzying, ideal for a movie scene.
Additional tracks, including I Know That and Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s previous output: stripped back and amorphous. The final song, A Hunger, has a subaquatic quality, with bubbling and beeping sounds that resemble medical monitors, blended with altered voicemail-like vocals.
The artist's soft, murmuring vocal is featured through almost the entirety of the record. The lyrics are almost imperceptible as her voice are floating, looped, stacked, sometimes barely there at all. Growing up in a household where vocal expression was discouraged, she’s said that it is something she’s consistently considered personal. Yet this is additionally an brilliant choice, enhancing the surreal haze on the beautiful, intimate record.
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