If you spoke to 23 year-old Ryan Hemsworth, his humility and composure might fool you into believing he’s just a casual dilettante, a “laptop artist” who makes music simply for his own amusement. But there’s much more to the rising Canadian DJ and producer than meets the eye (or voice) – Hemsworth is an accomplished solo artist and quickly becoming an equally adept and respected collaborator.

A former King’s College journalism student, Hemsworth started experimenting with electronic music only four years ago. During late night sessions he would mess with beats, remix popular tracks and tirelessly recycle the sounds he’d stumble upon. In his words, he parlayed an “obsession with music” into a tangible craft of equal parts sampling and creating. By August 2010 Hemsworth completed his first extended play, Cover Yr Shame a collection of wavy electronic hip-hop and R&B stylings known to Lil B fans as ‘based’ music.

“In the beginning,” Hemsworth says, “it was all totally just sampling music and messing with it until it sounded a little different from the original source. Based is used to describe my work because it’s maybe more dreamy, ethereal and samples are stretched out and pitched down. It’s more flow-y.

“Based is from the Lil B obsession. It’s about keeping things positive and being positive.”

In the following two years Hemsworth upped his musical output dramatically. He dropped four new EPs of original material including the excellent Last Words (2012), and completed a full length record with Oakland, CA-based cloud rapper Shady Blaze called Distorted. As he rose on college radio charts, Hemsworth developed a strong online presence, collecting over 20,000 Twitter followers and leaking exclusive bootlegs to a growing and curious digital fan base. Remixes of Kanye West’s “All of the Lights” and Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin’ Bout You” blended new pop sounds and became massive hits. The former includes a vocal track from Sidney Lumet’s 1976 film Network, an odd juxtaposition to be sure, but one that just works.

An attentiveness to detail and a trained ear for nearly every musical genre lends a distinctive feel to Hemsworth’s material. It’s a fusion of melting parts – hip hop, trap, bass, top 40 – dissolving into one another.

“ An attentiveness to detail and a trained ear for nearly every musical genre lends a distinctive feel to Hemsworth’s material. It’s a fusion of melting parts – hip hop, trap, bass, top 40 – dissolving into one another.

Guilt Trips is Hemsworth’s first solo LP, released in 2013 on Toronto- and Montréal-based Last Gang Records (Crystal Castles, Metric, Purity Ring). Like his other releases the 10 track jaunt is cloaked in melancholy and fuzz and punctuated by sharp percussion and synths, but features original vocal segments (instead of block samples) from alt rapper Lofty305 and singer-songwriters Sinead Harnett and Tinashe. Of the record Hemsworth says it represents the many changes he’s experienced during his career: the shift to international touring and the connections that inevitably come along with it.

“Because the record was made over a long span it was motivated by a lot of different emotions. It was influenced by being on the road, the cool stuff that was happening but also missing people and those feelings of longing and love. A lot of the people who were singing [Harnett, Tinashe] were talking about how those things affected them. That was their grounding.”

As Hemsworth soaks in the success of his debut album, he’ll also be preparing for an appearance at Detroit’s illustrious Movement Festival in May. There the young Canadian will share the the stage with Grammy Award-winner Jamie xx, Bonobo and Jimmy Edgar. It’s an opportunity to collide with some of the best in the game, and Hemsworth never takes it for granted.

“At first you’re opening for people for 50 dollars,” he says. “ It takes a while but its worth it, to have an identity, and to reach a point where you can share the stage with people you know and love.”