In his first EP Truth As A Process, XZR carves out a labyrinthine tower inverted and descending ever deeper into the recesses of truth and its shadows. In the exhaustion of the material world, truth appears as a luminous path—but one that is swiftly hijacked when it is found to be elusive and endless. The process then becomes disordered, futile, and self-flagellating as the toll of failures mount, triumphing over past gains and comforting pretensions. Recounting these unfolding cycles of realization and despair to critical mass, this EP sees the Toronto-based producer return to early sonic experiments in a dizzying and unflinching dive into madness.

“I was attempting to prove musical ideas that I've had since childhood” is as much of a statement as it is an open question. And the line of questioning runs deeper than our innermost, unconscious caverns as a collage of rhythms and textures freely form and deform over wild electronics and abyssal breakbeats. Beginning with discordant keys over rubble, the EP is full of razing where as soon as a new order emerges, another one rushes through to supplant it. In this world, once soothing melodies become aggravated and restless, and importantly, there are no refuges or even grounds for burial. The result is a sound caught in a looped struggle in a fight against its own illusions and endlessness.

Truth As A Process is a singular vision surfacing from the underbelly of Toronto’s experimental underground.

Producer and composer XEZR (fka Koohyaar) carves out a raw, idiosyncratic sound shaped by early immersion in Persian microtonality and Kurdish Sufi traditions, formative years of classical Oud training, and deep study in electronic practices and audio engineering—his primary focus since 2017. Bridging centuries-old modalities with influences from industrial techno, dub, EBM, no wave, and drum & bass, XEZR marks out new sonic territory with textures and rhythmically elusive structures that blur and manipulate the boundaries between acoustic memory and electronic abstraction.

A steady presence in Toronto’s underground, XEZR has worked as a producer, audio engineer, DJ, and label co-founder, with projects like SORB already under his belt. With an impressive output sometimes shared only amongst close collaborators, Truth As A Process is a welcome and long-awaited debut from the artist under new alias XEZR, which announces itself as an uncompromising arrival leaving much anticipation for what's to come.


Funded by Canada Council for the Arts