The Artist Dania: Her Album Listless – Personal Underground Music Inspired by Medical Late-Night Work

Besides producing atmospheric digital compositions, the Iraqi-born, Barcelona-based artist Dania furthermore works night shifts as an critical care physician. These late-night hours are the influence behind her new album Listless: all seven songs were composed and produced in the early hours, while the artwork showcases the slender blossom of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that flowers exclusively at night. However, there is little trace of the turmoil of her late-night schedule here: instead, the album embodies a quiet calm that is at times euphoric, occasionally uncanny.

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Meeting somewhere amid downtempo, ethereal rock and ambient, and a hint of pop, the textured songs slink along hypnotically, propelled by washes of synthesizers and, for the first time, drums. A new addition to the artist's usual setup, they add a soft downtempo kick to several of the tracks. Its shuffling, hazy beat in Personal Assistant recalls the 1990s-era bands Scala and another, while the song Car Crash Premonition is the closest the album come to intense. Composed following an disturbing cab ride to her studio one night, it is both contemplative and dizzying, fit for a movie scene.

Additional songs, such as I Know That and Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s previous work: minimalist and formless. The closing track, A Hunger, has a subaquatic quality, with bubbling and beeping sounds that sound like hospital monitors, interwoven with altered answerphone-style vocals.

Dania’s soft, murmuring vocal is featured through nearly the whole of the record. Its words are hardly discernible as her vocals are suspended, looped, stacked, at points barely there at all. Growing up in a home where singing was frowned upon, she’s said it’s an activity she’s consistently considered personal. Yet it’s additionally an brilliant decision, augmenting the surreal atmosphere on this beautiful, personal album.

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