Dania: Listless – Personal Experimental Pop Shaped by Medical Late-Night Work
In addition to crafting atmospheric electronic compositions, the Baghdad-born, Spain-based artist Dania furthermore works night shifts as an emergency doctor. Those late-night shifts are the influence for her new album Listless: each of the 7 songs were written and recorded in the early hours, and the cover features the spindly flower of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that only blooms after dark. However, you won't find much of the turmoil of her late-night schedule here: rather, the album embodies a quiet calm that is at times blissful, occasionally uncanny.
Converging at a point between downtempo, shoegaze and atmospheric, with a touch of catchy melodies, the textured songs slink along hypnotically, propelled by waves of synthesizers and, for the first time, drums. A new addition to the artist's usual arrangement, these drums lend a gentle downtempo kick to several of the songs. The shuffling, hazy rhythm in Personal Assistant recalls the 1990s-era groups Scala and Seefeel, while Car Crash Premonition is the closest things get to urgent. Written following an unnerving taxi journey to her workspace late one evening, it is both contemplative and woozy, ideal for a film montage.
Other songs, such as one titled I Know That and Write My Name, are closer in style of the artist's past work: stripped back and amorphous. The closing track, A Hunger, has a underwater feel, with bubbling and pinging electronics that sound like hospital equipment, blended with distorted voicemail-like singing.
Dania’s gentle, murmuring voice is present through nearly the whole of the album. The lyrics are hardly discernible as her vocals are floating, repeated, stacked, sometimes almost absent at all. Having been raised in a household where singing was frowned upon, she’s said that it is something she’s consistently considered personal. But this is also an inspired decision, augmenting the surreal haze on this beautiful, personal record.
Also Out This Month
One Group stretch four tracks out to nearly forty minutes on Inland See. Across those extended pieces (including an epic 18-minute final track), the Chicago trio present a further exemplary work in rich, wandering simplicity, with chugging repetitions and bubbly jazz flourishes. Over the past ten years, Timedance (the label of Bristol producer one individual) has been a cornerstone for bass-heavy experimental electronic beats. Their release TD10 celebrates this anniversary with twenty-three chunky, unconventional club tracks for any hour of the night, including contributions from renowned artists like re:ni, another, a third and the founder personally. Motivated partly by her own encounters of agoraphobia and fear of enclosed spaces, Fobia (Other People), the recent album by Argentinian musician Aylu, is appropriately personal, at moments stiflingly so. Proximity captures of strained inhales, swallows and hums expand into curious but frequently beautiful compositions.
