Dania: Her Album Listless – Personal Experimental Music Inspired by Medical Late-Night Work
In addition to crafting evocative electronic compositions, the Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based musician Dania also serves overnight duties as an emergency physician. Those nocturnal shifts are the influence for her new release Listless: all 7 tracks were composed and recorded in the early hours, while the cover features the slender blossom of the Japanese snake gourd, a species that only blooms after dark. However, there is little trace of the chaos of her overnight routine here: rather, the album exudes a serene peacefulness that is at times blissful, sometimes eerie.
Converging somewhere between downtempo, ethereal rock and ambient, and a hint of catchy melodies, the textured tracks slink along hypnotically, driven by waves of synthesizers and, as a new element, percussion. A new addition to the artist's typical arrangement, they lend a soft downtempo rhythm to several of the songs. Its meandering, murky rhythm in the track Personal Assistant evokes the 1990s-era groups one group and another, while Car Crash Premonition is the closest things get to intense. Written after an unnerving taxi journey to her studio one night, it is simultaneously brooding and dizzying, fit for a film montage.
Additional songs, such as I Know That and Write My Name, are more reminiscent of Dania’s past output: minimalist and formless. The final song, named A Hunger, has a subaquatic quality, with bubbling and beeping electronics that resemble medical equipment, blended with altered voicemail-like vocals.
The artist's gentle, whispering voice is featured through almost the entirety of the record. The lyrics are hardly discernible as her voice are suspended, looped, stacked, sometimes barely there entirely. Growing up in a home where vocal expression was frowned upon, she’s said it’s an activity she’s consistently considered private about. Yet it’s also an brilliant choice, augmenting the surreal haze on the gorgeous, intimate record.
Also Out This Month
Bitchin Bajas draw 4 tracks out to almost 40 minutes on Inland See. Throughout those extended pieces (featuring an grand 18-minute closer), the Chicago group present a further exemplary work in lush, meandering simplicity, with chugging loops and bubbly jazz flourishes. For the last decade, Timedance (the label of UK-based artist Batu) has been a foundation for low-end focused innovative dance music. Their release TD10 celebrates this anniversary with 23 chunky, left-of-centre dancefloor tracks for all times of the evening, with contributions from heavyweight artists such as one name, Skee Mask, Pearson Sound and the founder himself. Motivated in part by personal encounters of agoraphobia and fear of enclosed spaces, the album Fobia (Other People), the new album by from Argentina sound artist Aylu, is appropriately personal, sometimes overwhelmingly so. Proximity recordings of strained inhales, swallows and vocalizations expand into curious but often lovely creations.
