Single/Video Review: Initiate

Grant Duncan already has an impressive back catalogue of releases on Bandcamp, Soundcloud, YouTube, and Spotify. The Auckland-based singer/songwriter has also spent time fronting the Tokyo-based indie combo Pavement Candy, and the influence of his travels is worn proudly heart-on-sleeve in Initiate.

I’m mostly a rock guy, but I love to boogie, much to the chagrin of my offspring, who don’t seem to appreciate what an amazing dancer their dad is no matter how many times a day I demonstrate for them. Initiate immediately took me to the boogie-zone, and my teens were treated to more lessons in cutting sweet shapes on the dance floor.

The mood is light and free, a sweetly buoyant track made even more poignant when I moved from listening to the audio alone, to watching the video too. The video appears to be family holiday footage, but edited to nicely suit the audio (described as “a mesh of cultural styles and ambience, inspired by a trip to the Far East”). A lot of the video follows the exploits of two outrageously cute kids, alive with joy and laughter as they explore and create adventures.

A good track to play very loud whilst perhaps doing housework, like me. It’s pretty difficult to be down about doing dishes when I can shake my moneymaker to this at the same time.