Opposites attract: that’s perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when listening to Niklas Worgt and Eva Padberg’s new album, Sweet Nothings. The pair, better known as Dapayk & Padberg, join the Stil vor Talent family for their third full-length effort, a natural decision after the success of Dapayk’s recent The Little Things You Do and Let Go EPs. Similar to their previous LP oeuvre, as well as Dapayk’s solo work, one is simply astonished by the diversity, intertextuality, coherence and playfulness of the end result, something that must be attributed to the experienced duo’s wide-ranging set of influences. Work on the LP commenced two years ago and stretched across several continents. From the beach on Bali, via Miami, Los Angeles, Berlin and a ski chalet in the Austrian Alps, stunning and remote locations were to be the spectacular backdrop for Dapayk & Padberg’s creative process. Thus, one encounters soft and harsh sound textures, dark and light images, sonic euphoria and sadness as well as lyrics of love and loss throughout the tour de force that is Sweet Nothings. Things kick off with the trippy ‘Too Lazy’, a brooding afterhours number, which is equal parts paranoid and mesmerising as a wonky bass vibrates under dubbed out pads, eerie synths and vocal whispers. A bold move by Dapayk & Padberg as artists of lesser confidence might have opted for a lighter opener. Next, ‘Play’ immediately delivers the antidote however, reversing the evening’s proceedings back to the peak time. A housey beat pushes through muffled crowd noises and is backed up by a vocal repeatedly urging us to ‘play it out / play it loud’. The real strike of genius is the quirky piano here, which wouldn’t be out of place on Berlin’s most notorious dancefloor. On title track ‘Sweet Nothings’, Dapayk & Padberg’s sound takes another turn, presenting us with a deep but forceful groover, whose distorted high-hats and trancey synth stabs create a vibe both euphoric and weirdly subdued. The lyrics,