Meet Verzache, the Toronto musician promising a genre-blurring 2021 breakout

Music was defined by the internet in 2020 more than anything else, and chances are that’s something that’s not changing anytime soon. You saw dominative heavyweights rise through the Billboard and ARIA Charts through fanbase rallying and social media tactics (the internet’s imprint on the charts being one of 2020’s most-discussed musical topics), but one area where this really shows is in the next generation; the plethora of musicians - often isolated in the bedrooms through the year, toying around with instruments and production software - who used the internet to claw their way through the saturation of current-day music.

It’s something we saw a lot of within this kinda low-key indie-adjacent world, where artists blurred together sounds and genres with distinctly DIY energy that thrived on creativity and uniqueness. Take BLACKSTARKIDS’ 2000s nostalgia-dipped BRITNEY BITCH or recent breakthroughs like Charlie Burg and binki; artists who moulded together different energies they’re influenced by to create something unlike any of it, completely unique to themselves.

Canadian-based musician Verzache is someone that’s proved himself amongst this crowd for a few years now, but with the uptick of these artists in the last year, he’s standing tall amongst them and blossoming into someone special because of that. As a teen, he made a debut with D97 - a six-track exploration of his production skillset, indebted to electronica and hip-hop instrumentals spread throughout his playlists. Four years later, the Toronto musician’s work takes backdrops of those and transcends them; the final result being odes to electronica and hip-hop but rich with influences beyond these worlds: Tame Impala, Sampha, Bon Iver, Faye Webster and Foster The People included.

Throughout 2020, everything he released explored different sub-sections of this musical Venn diagram. He started the year with Talk, a sparse-built four-minutes of genre-blurring indie that begins with subtle melodic strums and rich vocals that eventually, grow alongside a stirring hip-hop production thick with 808s. Life Inside is a little more upbeat and lifelike, plucked from the bedroom-pop haze that brought acts like Clairo and Rex Orange County.

Verzache’s final three tracks of 2020, however, is where he shines the best - and a testament to his continued growth, even within the space of just a few months. Messed Up sees Zach Farache toy deeper with this lo-fi bedroom-pop niche, taking the instantly-recognised backbone of the sound and twisting it into his own specific sound. Calling, meanwhile, sweeps with its calls to hip-hop’s forward-thinking subtlety, as shown through the more low-key rappers that proved dominative through 2020. Look Away ties it all together, being the balancing act between the two sides as it marries the upbeat dance of his indie-pop prowess with the twinkles of hip-hop and R&B that require an attentive listen to unearth.

In saying that, the reasons we have eyes on Verzache isn’t due to his past - it’s about what’s incoming. The three songs are tastes of his forthcoming My Head is a Moshpit record, scheduled for release early on in the year. It’s bound to be a calling moment for the self-made act-to-watch, one that utilises its longer duration to explore the many facets of his sound and how they all intertwine with one another - like how they do on Look Away, for example. 

Verzache is an act that feels synonymous with the future, and the music being made by the young, exciting names sure to define it. It’s not unlike anything else per se, but it’s distinctly Verzache, brought together by the sounds and musicians that defines his listening, and the constantly-shifting changes to that palette that keeps his music facing forwards - it’s always evolving.

That’s something bound to show on My Head is a Moshpit, and fucking hell it’s going to be a great time.

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