Dania: Her Album Listless – Personal Experimental Pop Inspired by Hospital Night Shifts
Besides producing atmospheric electronic compositions, this Iraqi-born, Spain-based artist Dania furthermore serves night shifts as an critical care doctor. Those nocturnal hours serve as the inspiration for her latest release Listless: all 7 songs were composed and recorded in the early hours, while the artwork features the spindly blossom of the Trichosanthes cucumerina, a plant that only blooms at night. But, you won't find much of the chaos of her late-night routine here: rather, the album exudes a serene calm that is sometimes blissful, sometimes uncanny.
Converging somewhere amid downtempo, ethereal rock and ambient, with a touch of pop, the textured songs slink along dreamily, driven by washes of synthesizers and, for the first time, drums. A new addition to Dania’s usual setup, they add a gentle slow-paced rhythm to several of the songs. Its meandering, murky beat in the track Personal Assistant evokes the 1990s-era groups one group and another, while Car Crash Premonition is the closest things get to urgent. Composed following an unnerving cab ride to her studio one night, it is simultaneously contemplative and woozy, ideal for a movie scene.
Additional tracks, including one titled I Know That and Write My Name, are closer in style of Dania’s past work: minimalist and formless. The final song, A Hunger, has a subaquatic feel, with bubbling and pinging electronics that sound like medical equipment, blended with altered answerphone-style vocals.
The artist's gentle, whispering voice is present through almost the entirety of the album. Its words are almost imperceptible as her voice are suspended, repeated, stacked, sometimes almost absent entirely. Having been raised in a household where vocal expression was discouraged, she has stated that it is an activity she’s always felt personal. Yet it’s additionally an inspired decision, enhancing the dream-like haze on the beautiful, personal album.
New Releases This Month
One Group stretch 4 tracks out to almost forty minutes on their album Inland See. Across these lengthy compositions (including an epic 18-minute-long final track), the Windy City trio deliver a further masterclass in rich, wandering simplicity, with chugging repetitions and effervescent jazz touches. For the last decade, Timedance (the imprint of UK-based artist one individual) has served as a foundation for bass-heavy experimental electronic beats. TD10 celebrates that milestone with 23 weighty, left-of-centre dancefloor cuts for any hour of the evening, including input from renowned producers such as re:ni, another, Pearson Sound and Batu personally. Motivated partly by her own experiences of fear of open spaces and fear of enclosed spaces, the album Fobia (Other People), the new work by Argentinian musician Aylu, is appropriately personal, at moments stiflingly thus. Proximity captures of strained inhales, swallows and hums expand into intriguing but often beautiful compositions.
