- 'Crossed EP' is the debut offering on Underl_ne’s new sub-label Them. The brainchild by Troy Pierce, Underl_ne is one of the better new minimal labels with releases from Pierce himself under his Louderbach alias as well as a host of up and comers. Them is drawn up along the same lines: primarily as a platform for new, unknown artists to get their music out and into the crates of DJs.
This first release comes from Den, aka Tokuto Denda, a Japanese DJ and producer now residing in London. The press release cites Mike Ink and Fumiya Tanaka as two major influences and this clearly can be heard in the four cuts found on this EP. All are stripped back minimal numbers with glitches, beeps, squeaks, cut up samples and an array of other effects bouncing over deep basses. The four tracks really feel like variations on the same theme and all suffer from a similar problem. To put in bluntly, they just aren’t that interesting. The minimal cut-up glitch funk Den is aiming for is a very tough sound to pull off and he doesn’t really do it on most of the tracks. The closest he comes is on the A2 ‘Deep Therapy’ which a good funky number.
In short, Den has set himself a difficult task with this EP by choosing a sound that is really hard to make work. The results are very mixed and the only way these tracks could really be effective were if they were used in Ableton or a similar tool to give them a bit more oomph.