INIT Wildcard

INIT's music has the rare quality of transforming bleakness into a soothing experience. In the duo's new EP, 'Wildcard', this mechanism is more intense than ever. And that might be because of the particular circumstances that surrounded its inception. Two years ago, Nadia D'Alo and Benedikt Frey decided to move from Darmstadt to Berlin. Adjusting to a rough area of a big city when coming from a quiet town necessarily brings a change of perspective. For Nadia and Benedikt, that meant experiencing the city life as outsiders while trying to figure out what they wanted from it.'Wildcard' is the sonic result of this process, and proof that changes always bring growth. Recorded in their new home studio during winter, the six tracks on the EP are as haunting as their previous LP for Hivern, but with a rawer approach and enhanced power. Take 'Cover' and 'Solver', an approximation to the kind of moody psych-techno they display in their live-shows and two of the most dance floor oriented tracks INIT have recorded to date. But it's the title track which best expresses the mindset of this work. With its skeletal rattle and undulating synths, 'Wildcard' feels as desolate as a Berlin street in a winter night, but possesses the kind of focus that turns uncertainty into hope. In a similar way, cuts such as 'Copycat' or 'Half Baked' perfectly capture the sort of estrangement -daunting yet hopeful- that comes when moving into a new place, with its slow tempos mirroring the cautious pace of a foreigner and the intoxicated atmospheres calmly distilling the essence of a new environment. Nadia and Benedikt describe this new habitat as small kids on big bikes, eating dry instant noodles, playing with what's to find on the streets, static aircraft traffic closely over our heads and constant running engines. Listening to the music that arose from it, it's obvious that, once again, they've been able to overturn apparently hostile elements into a place were you'd want to stay forever. The 12" comes housed in a sleeve designed by Xavier Marin.