The Artist Dania: Listless – Personal Experimental Pop Inspired by Medical Late-Night Work
Besides crafting atmospheric digital compositions, the Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based artist Dania furthermore works overnight duties as an critical care physician. Those late-night hours are the influence for her latest album Listless: all 7 tracks were written and produced after midnight, and the artwork features the slender blossom of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that only blooms at night. However, you won't find much of the chaos of her overnight schedule in this music: instead, the album exudes a serene peacefulness that is sometimes blissful, occasionally eerie.
Meeting at a point amid trip-hop, shoegaze and atmospheric, with a touch of catchy melodies, the textured tracks glide hypnotically, propelled by washes of synthesizers and, as a new element, drums. A new addition to the artist's typical arrangement, these drums add a gentle downtempo kick to several of the tracks. The shuffling, hazy beat in Personal Assistant recalls the late-90s bands one group and another, while Car Crash Premonition is the nearest the album come to intense. Written after an disturbing cab ride to her studio late one evening, it is both brooding and dizzying, ideal for a movie scene.
Additional songs, including one titled I Know That and another called Write My Name, are closer in style of the artist's past work: minimalist and amorphous. The closing track, A Hunger, possesses a subaquatic feel, with bubbling and beeping sounds that resemble hospital equipment, interwoven with distorted answerphone-style singing.
Dania’s gentle, murmuring voice is featured through nearly the whole of the record. The words are hardly discernible as her voice are suspended, looped, stacked, at points barely there at all. Growing up in a home where singing was frowned upon, she has stated it’s something she’s always felt personal. But it’s additionally an brilliant choice, enhancing the dream-like haze on the beautiful, personal album.
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