review
Crossing Paths doesn't pad "The Maze" out to a longer EP
Two tracks and six minutes is the whole record, and Crossing Paths treats that as a decision rather than a placeholder for something longer.
deepmelodic
Two tracks, six minutes and twenty-one seconds combined, out January 23 on Purified Records. That's the entire release. "The Maze" runs 3:23 and opens it. "No Escape" closes things out at 2:58. No third track, no remix package, no extended edition sitting behind the short one. We'd call that a decision, not a placeholder for a longer EP that didn't come together in time.
Crossing Paths isn't new to the label. Two earlier tracks, "In Circles" and "Morning Run," were softer and slower than anything on The Maze, and they were enough to land the act a spot on Purified Fragments 27, the label's own various-artists set. The sound's moved since then. We rated those first tracks. This one hits harder, and it's the better record for it.
Purified is a fitting home for the restraint. Nora En Pure built the label in 2019 as the studio counterpart to her Purified events series and her SiriusXM show, and its catalogue has always sat on the warmer, more patient side of melodic house: the room where a record doesn't have to announce itself to earn its four minutes. Two tracks this tight isn't Crossing Paths playing it safe on that label. It's the label's own instinct, matched. Say what you came to say, then stop.
The sequencing here says something on its own. "No Escape," at 2:58, is the shorter of the two tracks and it runs second — the less common order. Most two-track releases put the longer cut last, on the assumption that a set needs somewhere to land and the bigger track should do the landing. Here the shorter piece gets the final word instead, which reads as the closer being built to leave a gap rather than fill one. That's a specific choice about how the record wants to end, and it's the kind of detail a two-track release can afford to make deliberately, because there's nowhere else on the tracklist for it to hide.
What a release this size buys a DJ is speed. Six minutes total means both tracks slot into a set without asking for a commitment the way a longer arc does: no ten-minute build to justify, no come-down to program around. "The Maze" leads because it's the longer of the two and the title track. "No Escape" is the quicker exit once it's done its job. That's a two-track record built to be used rather than sat with, and there's nothing wrong with that. Not every release needs to be an occasion.
That earlier work is why The Maze doesn't read as tentative. This is an act Purified already had its eye on, pushing into a sharper, more aggressive lane and doing it without padding the release out to prove the point. Two tracks. No filler. The restraint's the same. Only the register moved.
Stream The Maze on Spotify.