Dania - Listless

Dania, an ordinarily highly conceptual sound artist who splits her time between Barcelona and her job as an emergency doctor in rural Australia (quite the commute), claims that Listless is the closest she's come to making a 'pop' record. Pop is that most subjective of terms, though you can understand her reasoning. This is the kind of pop song writing that was first hugely popular in the post-Cocteaus early 90s and is now the de-facto frame of reference for the kind of ambi-pop that dominates certain early morning NTS shows and streaming service playlists with titles that reference Copenhagen and various dreamstates. Somewhere Press have form in this same area, though the shuffling trip-hop beats, ethereal vocals and midnight drive synths of Listless feel like the most extrovert example of this kind of sound they've released to date, even if some obvious concessions are being made to the crepuscular liminality of Moon Phase-era Coil. If this is an approach born in the previous century, then Dania's connection to contemporary Australia makes sense of the reanimation, drawing connections to the sensual dreamworld trip hop of Tornado Wallace's a.s.o, HTRK and Dregs. Where pop and the underground intersect is a murky notion. Listless doesn't make those distinctions any clearer, but when you're existent in the glooming of the after hours realm, clarity isn't necessarily something you need to be seeking. Like much of the best music, it's in the in-between unknowns where you find the more intriguing diversions. 
 
FFO: HTRK, a.s.o, Dregs, Natural Wonder Beauty Concept, Spivak