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Northumbria

NORTHUMBRIA and FAVX at Handlebar (159 Augusta), Sunday (July 5), 9 pm. Pwyc. 


Calling guitarist Jim Field and bassist Dorian Williamson sonic adventurers would be an understatement. As Northumbria, the Toronto duo pursue a kind of widescreen, intensely ambient drone metal that’s wholly improvised, made and performed live.

Listening to it, you can imagine both the epic (icebergs splitting, tectonic plates shifting) and the subtle (sand washing out with the tide, soft winds blowing through a darkened woodscape). A soundtrack to the natural world’s every move. 

“Dorian lives in the Cobourg area, which is down by the lake,” Field tells me over the phone from his Mississauga condo. “And when I walk outside, I’m in the woods. That proximity to nature, standing in wonder at the hugeness of it all, that’s the undercurrent in everything we’ve ever written.”

For their introspective new album out on Cryo Chamber, the long-time friends went for a less heavy approach and focused in on Helluland, the name of the album and also what Nunavut’s Baffin Island was called by Norse explorers around 1000 AD. 

“We were inspired by the idea of the Vikings’ discovery of Baffin Island as a new land, and the bravery and hardship they would’ve experienced going through the northern seas, the determination that would’ve taken,” Field explains. “And then how it must’ve felt to find this pristine, brand new place.

“[The concept] had a lot of potential for a thematic storytelling approach. Because our music is all instrumental, it has its own internal dialogue, as opposed to an overt concept told through lyrics. So we treated this almost like writing a soundtrack.”

The 10-song album is a distillation of live-off-the-floor recording sessions. It’s remarkable in its symphonic expansiveness – especially considering only two guys with guitars are creating all that you’re hearing. 

They get help from a variety of electronic gadgets – “my pedal board is an ocean of technology,” laughs Field – including looping pedals, EBows and, most vital to their sound, sustainer pickups attached to their guitars that allow chords to ring out indefinitely, which they then loop and build upon. Very rarely do you ever hear them pluck or pick a string.

Field, who’s been part of the Toronto music scene for 28 years, including in the AMBiENT PiNG collective, never knows what to expect from their shows, including the upcoming one at Handlebar. 

“We don’t really get a chance to jam much, which is unfortunate but also the nature of life. When we go into this one, it’ll be the first time we’ve seen each other since we played Montreal [in early June]. And we’ll say, ‘What do you want to do tonight? What are you feeling?’ Then we’ll let it develop.

“It’s a wonderful way to work. A sort of rebellion toward the way we’ve done things in the past. Our old bands were heavily structured, about repetition and making sure everything was tight and exactly right. There’s beauty in that, too: crafting a song, an idea. But you get to the stage where it’s perfect and then… so what? You’ve taken the ideas as far as you can.

“Live, because we don’t know what’s going to happen, we’re on our toes the whole time, and that keeps us very much in the moment.”

carlag@nowtoronto.com | @carlagillis

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