Ursa Maja Making August #UMXYMonth
Nick Murray
Moose Jaw's most popular, hardest working and most prolific hip hop artist is back in the studio once again. This time it's for a full length collaboration with a familiar partner: X Yoast, a producer from Radville.
Combined, Ursa Maja and X Yoast make up UMXY, an experimental hip hop duo that combines Ursa's clear, smooth vocals and Yoast's ethereal beats. The album they are on the verge of releasing is called Four Seasons. And for the month of August they'll be releasing a new track every three days. They're making it official with #UMXYMonth.
This isn't the first time these two artists have worked together.
"We've been friends since 2002, when I first moved to Saskatchewan" Ursa said. "We used to play in a band together. Yoast did vocals and played bass. I did vocals and played drums. We co-wrote lyrics. The band thing kind of died down once we went to college, but we never stopped writing music."
In 2016, the duo released a 6 song EP called Connecting Flights. You can find it on Spotify and YouTube.
Check out the track Degenerate (2 Shots)
They followed Connecting Flights up with a trio of stand-alone tracks; "My Limit", "Addicted" and "Chariot of Fire". All three of which are on YouTube as well. Those singles will be included as bonus tracks on Four Seasons.
The full project will be available on August 31st.
The tracklist for Four Seasons
"In UMXY, Yoast produces all the instrumentals and comes up with a lot the overall project concepts" Ursa said. "I write the songs and do the vocals. That's how it is for now anyway."
At first listen, Ursa notes "you can immediately notice our evolution from Connecting Flights to Four Seasons. Evolution is exactly what we want. Each project we release should be better than the last."
Ursa Maja admits that "Four Seasons is a trip". He says that "if you listen to the album from start to finish, you'll get it. It deals with issues such as impulsiveness, addiction, depression and anxiety, but has "fun" songs, too. There are ups and downs: extreme highs and extreme lows. That's what Yoast and I--and most people for that matter--experience in real life, so that's what we express in our music."
"I'm just having a lot of fun with UMXY right now" Ursa stated. "It's cool writing music with a lifelong friend and having someone else to bounce ideas off of"
UMXY isn't Ursa's only project. He continues his work as a solo artist and for the foreseeable future, he says, he will keep releasing a new stand-alone single every year or so. "I released "For the Summer" in 2017," he said, "and I'm releasing a new single before the end of 2018. Ursa Maja isn't stopping, and CJE, the group of local rappers he affiliates with, is still going strong.
Check out "For the Summer"
As per Ursa's "usual preference," Connecting Flights was recorded, mixed, and mastered in its entirety by Jared Robinson at Nebulus Entertainment.
You can keep updated with the tracks as they are released by following UMXY on Facebook and Twitter and you can check out their music out on Spotify, YouTube and ITunes.