That's not quite the same. Zsh's <X-Y> is file globbing, only files that exist are returned. {X-Y} is parameter expansion without regard to files:

  > touch 1 3
  > ls <1-3>
  1 3
  > ls {1..3}
  cannot access 2: no such file or directory
  1 3

Nevertheless, that's a useful and more powerful alternative to seq that I didn't know about.