The Artist Dania: Listless – Intimate Experimental Pop Shaped by Hospital Night Shifts
Besides crafting atmospheric digital pieces, the Iraqi-born, Spain-based artist Dania furthermore serves overnight duties as an emergency physician. Those late-night shifts serve as the inspiration for her latest release Listless: all 7 songs were composed and recorded in the early hours, and the cover features the spindly blossom of the Japanese snake gourd, a species that only blooms at night. But, there is little trace of the chaos of her overnight schedule in this music: instead, the record exudes a quiet calm that is sometimes blissful, occasionally uncanny.
Converging somewhere amid downtempo, ethereal rock and ambient, and a hint of pop, the layered songs slink along dreamily, driven by washes 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. Its meandering, murky beat in Personal Assistant recalls the 1990s-era bands Scala and Seefeel, whereas Car Crash Premonition is the nearest the album come to urgent. Written following an unnerving taxi journey to her studio one night, it is both brooding and dizzying, ideal for a film montage.
Additional songs, including one titled I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s past output: minimalist and amorphous. The closing track, A Hunger, has a underwater feel, with bubbling and beeping sounds that sound like medical monitors, blended with distorted answerphone-style singing.
The artist's soft, murmuring vocal is featured across nearly the whole of the album. Its lyrics are almost imperceptible as her vocals are floating, looped, layered, at points almost absent at all. Growing up in a home where singing was discouraged, she has stated it’s something she’s always felt private about. But this is also an inspired decision, enhancing the dream-like atmosphere on this gorgeous, intimate record.
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