National Post (National Edition)
DO YOU HEAR WHAT I HEARN?
An iconic industrial building brings Toronto a music fest like no other
This weekend, Toronto will get its first taste of Poland’s Unsound Festival, a unique event with a focus on electronic and experimental music, visual art, and new media that launched in 2003 and has since branched worldwide, touching down in places as disparate as Minsk, London and Adelaide. Up until now, New York City has been the festival’s only North American stop.
So how did Toronto snag the lauded fest from New York? It’s all about location — the venue, to be precise. On Friday to Saturday, festivalgoers will be treated not only to music from cutting-edge electronic and experimental artists — including Stars of the Lid, Tim Hecker, Ben Frost, Emptyset, and Lustmord — but a rare peek into one of Toronto’s most iconic former industrial structures: the massive Hearn Generating Station, opened in the ’50s, and decommissioned in 1983.
“We were already thinking about the idea of presenting Unsound in a North American city outside New York,” Unsound creator Mat Schulz confides via email. “When (Luminato) suggested Toronto, it seemed like fate. Then they showed us the Hearn. How could anyone say no?”
Unsound has long sought out non-traditional venues, such as an abandoned communist-era hotel and a 14thcentury Gothic church in Krakow. “Unsound becomes an experience for the audience and artists,” Schulz explains, “exploring architecture as well as sound and visual elements ... there’s something about such a raw, industrial space that feels like a natural fit for the music we present.”
Jorn Weisbrodt, Luminato’s Artistic Director, enthuses that the venue immediately captured the imagination of ticket buyers: “Everyone knows (the Hearn) ... the smokestack; it’s so present, but nobody has been inside it, so there’s an adventurous spirit around that.”
As more festivals spring up in Toronto (and come from afar, such as Unsound), the need for new performance spaces will rise with them. Toronto’s Music City initiative has struggled so far to bring music to unconventional spaces such as Geary Avenue’s industrial stretch or, in the case of the Great Heart Festival, even Trinity Bellwoods park. Future plans for activating the potential of spaces like the Hearn will become essential — and allow Toronto’s secret corners a chance to shine. Though Schulz admits Unsound’s reputation is a huge draw, “it’s the Hearn that really has everyone amazed — it’s the big star.”
In what has become Toronto’s busiest festival summer in history, events need clearly defined concepts — something Weisbrodt knows Unsound has achieved. Besides the venue, he points to the intrigue surrounding Tim Hecker’s Ephemera, a synesthetic collaboration with perfumer Geza Schoen, as an experience no one else can offer. Ephemera’s unique live multimedia project at home in Canada combines heavy, sonic drone music with fog, custom lighting and scent diffusers that will fill an enclosed room with the perfume Schoen developed to encapsulate Hecker’s music, aptly called Drone.
Hecker is no stranger to non-traditional venues. “I’ve played in a lot of weird places,” Hecker recalls, “abandoned industrial spaces — I’ve played two floors down in a mine shaft; in empty German power stations. I enjoy it. It’s more fun ... it’s a different way (for audiences) to hear something. Weirder spaces are interesting because you have to deal with a bunch of odd things that colour that sound.”
I ask if Hecker’s been wearing the “Drone” perfume he helped create, which is available for sale as a functional art object through Unsound, along with Ben Frost’s “Noise” and Kode9’s “Bass.” “I only wear Drone,” Hecker laughs, “No, I’m joking — but yes, I definitely do.”