review
Aplexo's Down opens on the collaboration and closes without it
Down repeats the pairing that gave Aplexo his first single on Purified, then spends two tracks proving the record doesn't need it a second time.
deepmelodic
Aplexo's third release on Purified Records breaks the shape of the two before it. "Faces" ran two tracks. So did "Space." "Down," out July 24, runs three, and it opens by bringing back the one name that's shown up on an Aplexo record before. Not a new pairing. The same one.
LUFS is credited on the title track, the same credit that sat on "Faces," Aplexo's first single under his own name on the label, back in August 2025. That's most of what "Down" is doing: it doesn't go looking for a new pairing to carry the lead. It brings back the one that already worked, then spends the rest of the record proving it didn't need to. LUFS doesn't turn up again on "The Sound" or "Ember." Those two are Aplexo alone, and the record trusts them to close on their own.
The title track earns the opening slot on how it's built, not just on the credit. It comes in warm: a soft grand piano and a female vocal, nothing pushed, before an analogue synth picks the core ostinato back up and works it through a run of reintroductions, the phrase returning each time the track's ready for it rather than dumped once at a drop. That patience is what makes handing the rest of the record to two tracks that don't repeat the trick feel like a plan rather than a shrug.
Run times back that reading up. "The Sound" and "Ember" sit at 3:18 each against "Down"'s 3:49. Nothing here runs long, and nothing runs short either. Ten minutes and twenty-five seconds across three tracks is tight even by EP standards, and every track sits inside a thirty-second band of every other one. That's not an accident on a label whose own description of itself stretches from chill cuts to club-focused ones. "Down" picks the club end and holds it. Three tracks, built to nearly the same length, because they're built for the same job. It's a record that fits together and gets out before it wears out the welcome it opens with — this is a box record, not a headphone one. Nothing here asks a DJ to plan a set around a nine-minute outro.
Purified is Nora En Pure's label, running since late 2019 out of the Purified radio show and event series she'd already built in the years before, and it's carried the same instinct from a Saturday slot on Sirius XM Chill into a live series that's played Miami, New York, Berlin and London. The sound hasn't drifted. Melodic and deep house, willing to get harder toward the tech house end when a record calls for it. Aplexo fits that description without straining.
He's newer to the roster than the label is to the sound. His first appearance on Purified wasn't even under his own name — a track called "Enough" turned up on the various-artist compilation Purified Fragments XXX in mid-2025, one voice among several. "Faces" gave him his own single a few weeks later, and "Space" followed that November. Three releases inside a year, each one a step up from the last. Then this one. "Down" is the biggest of them yet, the first with three tracks instead of two and the first to bring a name back rather than introduce a new one.
That's what makes leading with LUFS a choice rather than a default. A three-track record could open on any of the three, and "Down" puts the returning pairing first anyway. Then it doesn't touch it again. "The Sound" and "Ember" don't reach for the hook the way the title track does. They're the quieter half of the record, there to hold the room once the opener's done its job, and neither one needs to announce itself to do that. By the time "Ember" closes it out, "Down" has already made its case without LUFS in the room.