Dania – Listless
With all the songs on Listless composed after midnight, Dania's album truly lives in its darkest corners
“Recorded after midnight,” say the liner notes accompanying Dania’s collection of hypnagogic reveries, Listless. The majority of these amorphous compositions reflect the waking dream of pushing through the night, throwing up contradictions that arise when watching clock hands tick slower than seconds should be. Like its title, the record can feel like walking underwater – journeying without movement. On its closer, A Hunger, Dania’s vocals are staticky and seem to pass by like a loudspeaker in a moving car, while the song’s undulating electronics circle the drain.
But when percussion appears on Heart Shaped Burn and Car Crash Premonition, it brings a tumbling, welcome chaos. The enigmatic Dania spends some of her time as an emergency doctor in remote parts of Australia – it’s on these songs that the mental tightrope of working the night shift of a high stress job seeps through. The insomniac momentum of Scorsese’s Bringing Out the Dead comes to mind.
Where artists have this year used trip-hop and downtempo – just two of the modes Listless exists in – to convey sexual liberation or as a way to stand out from the crowd, Dania’s album truly lives in its darkest corners.
Listen to: Personal Assistant, Heart Shaped Burn, Write My Name