The Artist Dania: Her Album Listless – Personal Underground Music Shaped by Hospital Late-Night Work
Besides crafting evocative electronic compositions, this Baghdad-born, Spain-based musician Dania also serves night shifts as an emergency doctor. Those nocturnal shifts serve as the inspiration for her latest album Listless: all seven tracks were written and recorded after midnight, while the artwork features the spindly blossom of the Trichosanthes cucumerina, a species that only blooms at night. However, you won't find much of the turmoil of her overnight schedule here: rather, the album embodies a quiet calm that is at times euphoric, sometimes eerie.
Meeting somewhere amid downtempo, shoegaze and atmospheric, and a hint of catchy melodies, the layered songs slink along dreamily, driven by washes of synths and, as a new element, drums. An innovative feature to Dania’s usual setup, these drums lend a soft downtempo kick to a number of the tracks. The meandering, murky rhythm in the track Personal Assistant evokes the 1990s-era groups Scala and Seefeel, whereas the song Car Crash Premonition is the nearest the album come to intense. Written following an disturbing cab ride to her workspace late one evening, it is simultaneously contemplative and woozy, fit for a film montage.
Additional tracks, such as I Know That and Write My Name, are closer in style of the artist's past work: stripped back and formless. The final song, named A Hunger, has a subaquatic feel, with gurgling and beeping electronics that resemble hospital monitors, blended with altered voicemail-like singing.
Dania’s soft, whispering voice is present through nearly the whole of the album. The words are hardly discernible as her voice are suspended, looped, stacked, sometimes almost absent entirely. Growing up in a household where singing was discouraged, she’s said it’s an activity she has always felt private about. But this is also an brilliant decision, enhancing the surreal haze on this beautiful, intimate record.
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