HRMXNY – Strange As It Seems EP

Canadian producer HRMXNY is dropping his second EP of the year, Strange As It Seems, but it’s not the project he thought he would be releasing even just a few months ago: “It was more jersey club, sample-based ratchet shit. It was cool but it had no emotional effect on me. I wanted every song to have a story, so I scrapped the first one and started over.” SAIS is now a six-track journey across a variety of genres — hip-hop, house and future R&B are just a few of the sonic stylings— but more importantly emotions, presenting a depth and versatility that HRMXNY considers integral to his artistic identity: “I really wanted to show I could do more than just one thing. It’s like all my influences in one. For instance, I’m inspired by a lot of the artists on Young Turks — Jamie xx, SBTRKT, Sampha — and they’re all similar and yet so different. I also have a bit of musical ADHD.” He collaborated with close friends on the EP and gives a lot of credit to those who contributed to the project saying that although he might have “made the music, they made the songs.”

He’s made the rounds as a DJ around his hometown of Toronto and at various festivals across Eastern Canada including Bestival, Hopscotch and the Mad Decent Block Party, and while he doesn’t rule out working with other artists or producers, HRMXNY wants to be known as an artist over everything. “I like owning a project from start to finish so I can look at it and say I did that right or I did that wrong,” he says. At the end of the day he just wants to make music that affects people as much as when he first heard SBTRKT’s “Trials of Days Past,” which is why the emotional content and lyricism were paid particular attention to on this latest EP. “If you look at the biggest songs in the world, there’s something to them,” he says. “Michael Jackson, The Beatles — every one of those songs had a story. And that’s the separator between being an artist and being a producer.”

Stream Strange As It Seems above, and peep HRMXNY.com to download.