Dania – Listless (2025) Review: As well as making atmospheric electronic compositions, the Baghdad-born, Barcelona-based musician Dania also works night shifts as an emergency doctor. These nocturnal hours are the influence behind her new album Listless: all seven tracks were composed and recorded after midnight, while the artwork features the spindly flower of the Japanese snake gourd, a plant that only blooms after dark. But there is little trace of the chaos of her late-night schedule here: instead, the record embodies a quiet calm that is sometimes blissful, sometimes eerie. Meeting somewhere between trip-hop, shoegaze and ambient, with a touch of pop, the textured tracks slink along dreamily, propelled by washes of synths and, for the first time, drums. A new addition to Dania’s usual setup, they lend a gentle downtempo kick to several of the songs. The shuffling, murky beat in Personal Assistant recalls the late-’90s groups Scala and Seefeel, while Car Crash Premonition is the closest things get to urgent. Written after an unnerving taxi journey to her studio one night, it is both brooding and woozy, fit for a film montage. Other tracks, such as I Know That and Write My Name, are more reminiscent of Dania’s past work: stripped back and amorphous. The closing track, A Hunger, has a subaquatic quality, with bubbling and beeping electronics that sound like hospital monitors, interwoven with distorted answerphone-style vocals. Dania’s soft, murmuring voice is featured through almost the entirety of the record. The lyrics are almost imperceptible as her vocals are suspended, looped, layered, sometimes barely there at all. Growing up in a household where singing was frowned upon, she’s said it’s something she’s always felt private about. But it’s also an inspired choice, augmenting the dream-like haze on this gorgeous, intimate album. — Guardian Track List: 01 - On a Grassy Knoll 02 - Personal Assistant 03 - I Know That 04 - Heart Shaped Burn 05 - Car Crash Premonition 06 - Write My Name 07 - A Hunger Media Report: Genre: ambient, dream-pop, electronic Origin: Barcelona, Spain Format: FLAC Format/Info: Free Lossless Audio Codec Bit rate mode: Variable Channel(s): 2 channels Sampling rate: 44.1 KHz Bit depth: 16 bits Compression mode: Lossless Writing library: libFLAC 1.3.0 (UTC 2013-05-26) Note: If you like the music, support the artist