With so many artists claiming to be cross-genre, playing fusion games or even having gone beyond genre itself these days, it has become quite a meaningless label, especially as most of them seem to be anything but. But, with The Fire Within, such labels do seem apposite.
But that isn’t to say that there is anything too unfamiliar to be found here. Still, plenty of fresh approaches and original sonic attitudes are woven through, enough to keep everything creative to match the comfort levels. It is safe to say that the building blocks found here are familiar but the sonic architecture that is crafted is something new to behold.
If there is one element that runs through the music, it is a sort of 80’s sheen, a sonic sophistication that has more to do with tone or texture than what the music actually sounds like. And what we have here is an artist walking a sure-footed line between pop’s poise and polish and rock’s grandeur and energy and numerous other sounds and scenes and styles too.
And so we find songs such as “The Tease,” a blend of darkwave-infused pop delicacy and raw alt-rock guitars, a slow and sensual sonic slice, we find “Lost in the Fall,” which leans into almost New Romantic anthemics and then reimagines them for a new audience, and we find “My Everything” a song that embraces both folk understatement and gothic balladry, dark, desirous, delicious.
Apex4X has created a great album here, one that wanders in and out of a series of adjacent genres – from rock to goth to metal to pop to alt-folk – which blends digital dexterity with analog energy, which looks to the past for influences whilst rearranging those familiar elements into a sound for the future.
