Antagonist - Apashe

Somehow, Apashe manages to blend trap, bass, hip-hop, and classical music together. Classical? Really? 

But it actually works. In fact, it's not just any blend of random orchestral samples with crude beats; Apashe composed 4 original classical pieces to work with for "Antagonist". Apashe's built his career on cinematics—even having featured in movie soundtracks—with his orchestral-infused style, bringing forth a collision of vastly different eras to secure his prominence in the modern electronic scene. "Antagonist" demonstrates just why this has worked so well for him. It's all the grandeur of the classical era, all the flow and rhythm of hip-hop, and all the intensity of trap and bass, and what Apashe has been doing for years seems to have reached a milestone in this album. Hosting a wide range of hip-hop styles, from "King" featuring Busta Rhymes' legendary rapping, to the pidgen rap of Magugu in "Revenge of the Orchestra"—along with plenty of electronic styles alongside the trap that permeates most of the tracks—Apashe blends enough diversity into this project to keep it interesting, whilst also staying true to his acclaimed genre-bending techniques. The production is squeaky clean too, a little violin instrumentation here, a few orchestra choirs mixed in there, the sub-bass always prominent and the vocals always leading the track in such a well-produced manner. The biggest testament to this is that I barely even noticed the classical gimmick upon first listen; it's so clean it's transcended the idea of a 'gimmick', simply becoming part of the music like anything else—and I think that's something a lot of producers should aspire to do, because if Apashe can do it with such an unorthodox blend, it's clearly not impossible. Apashe has done that with "Antagonist" (I think the fact that he self-composed the classical elements plays a big part) and it's given him complete dominance over his style, to the point where it's difficult to find many surface-level flaws with this tracklist.

But unfortunately "Antagonist" does not make it out unscathed. The complete control is subtle, and I adore that, but the cohesiveness suffers a lot. I suspect this is partly due to the completely out-of-left-field Indian-inspired section with "Gasoline" and "Lost In Mumbai" which completely threw me for a loop (and not in a good way, because even though I thoroughly enjoyed both tracks, the section feels completely out of place), and partly due to the slightly directionless lyricism most of the rap employs, considering most of them eventually boil down to 'look how cool I am'. It feels like Apashe's managed to finally perfect his style, but in doing so he's overlooked the other core elements of an album.