URBNET is a Canadian label, but they occasionally look beyond their borders to release some music. This time, they look towards Tokyo to bring in a young producer by the name of EYTREG. He’s only been putting out music since 2015, but he’s been fairly prolific since then. His latest album is One’s Hidden Agony.

One’s Hidden Agony is being presented as an album, but it feels more like a beat tape in practice. I make this distinction because I want to relate the ways in which this album feels undeveloped and constantly shifting. There are twenty tracks here mostly in the one-to-two-minute range. This doesn’t mean you can’t have an album in this format, but to call it an album usually implies some sort of artistic cohesion to the project. EYTREG is a decent producer, but most of the beats here feel pretty unformed, like they are rough drafts of ideas that might get fleshed out later. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either, except there are a few things missing here that would help this release out, even if it we consider it a beat tape, and not an album. One is that while EYTREG seems to want an identity based around his eclectic taste in music, as the beats on this tape jump around a lot, touching on everything from trap to bossa nova. This can make for some interesting building blocks, but it’s not enough to just be eclectic as a producer, especially one as young as EYTREG, whom a lot of people will be hearing for the first time with this release. You need to take those influences and put them in conversation with each other and find interesting aspects about their similarities and differences. Also, in doing so, you need to find a way to push your own identity through each beat, so that when people ask about what you sound like, I can say more than, “He makes a lot of short beats that are all over the map.” It’s frustrating to listen to a project like this and still feel like I don’t know who the artist is when I get to the end.

I don’t want to rag on EYTREG too much, because I feel like there is some potential below the surface of One’s Hidden Agony, but it is frustrating to listen to. In 2018, it’s not good enough to put out a collection of twenty random, short beats, and expect anyone to take notice. There’s just too much instrumental music out there. You need to take the time to develop these beats, and to have some vision to make something interesting and different that will stand apart from the crowd.