Renaissance - Apashe

Apashe's first explicitly classical-styled LP is stylistically as good as ever, but, in retrospect, it doesn't quite compare to much of his later stuff.

"Renaissance" marks a major step forward for Apashe's branding. Solidifying his influences in both classical music and hip-hop, Apashe embarks on a 13-track run of just that — big trap beats complemented by a range of rappers and a smattering of grand classical sampling. It's everything we've come to expect from this producer — the production is clean, the basslines are impactful, and the vocal features are incredibly good.  "Renaissance" does well to avoid bastardizing the sacrosanct classical style, too — a feat that cannot be understated — allowing the vocalists and rappers to take the spotlight whilst the orchestral sampling adds its twist of grandeur to the project. Stylistically, this is Apashe's trump card. Orchestral electronic is a style that has been attemped many times before, but no one does it quite like Apashe, and nothing does it quite like his albums. And to throw hip-hop into that mix is something that, again, nobody could do quite like Apashe. That's where the strength of "Renaissance" lies — banging basslines, intense rapping and majestic orchestras. But I think — especially compared to his later album "Antagonist" — that "Renaissance" doesn't quite have the production maturity it could have had. For the electronic portions of this album, Apashe relies quite heavily on strong basses and empty trap beats, and whilst the production is interesting, it also begins to feel quite repetitive. And it doesn't quite have the impressive quality that "Antagonist" went on to have, of Apashe composing his own classical pieces rather than sampling already existing ones. Make no mistake, nothing here is terrible, but there was a lot of room to expand upon it conceptually, room Apashe didn't quite see in his first full-length iteration of this style. "Renaissance" begins to create problems for itself, lacking the star power it needed and feeling somewhat half-baked. 

However, that room to expand was sufficiently filled four years later by "Antagonist". "Renaissance" itself is no joke, sure, and it is a good project in itself. Some of the songs on this project are great, whether it's the more intense bass cuts, the more rap-heavy cuts, or the more emotive vocal-based cuts, and retrospectively, it has provided a stylistic foundation for much of Apashe's later works, but "Renaissance" will always live in the shadow of what came after it.