I first heard Ben Frost through a neighbour friend in Kensington Market who was obsessed with Iceland. It was 2009 and the album was named BY THE THROAT. For once, the all-caps didn’t seem excessive. Frost’s music grabbed me by the proverbial jugular – all bone-chilling Arctic drones and black-metal doom-biance. My friend soon moved to Iceland, as Frost himself did from Australia in 2005, and the harsh beauty of the tiny island nation – basically just one big glacier-capped volcano in the middle of the North Atlantic – must make for a powerful muse. My own visit to Iceland two years later is still a lifetime high, with natural sights such as the Gulfoss waterfall, Dimmuborgir volcanic region, the Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon and the actual goddamn Northern Lights, ranking high alongside an inspirational visit to the Greenhouse studio, run by Frost’s collaborator and Bedroom Community label head, Valgeir Sigurdsson.

So it is a pleasure on behalf of Wavelength to have the opportunity to present Ben Frost’s live debut in Toronto this Friday at the Garrison, as part of a massive tour in support of his latest album, A U R O R A. The 2014 full-length came into the world after a five-year gap that was far from empty for Frost, as it saw collaborations with everyone from Brian Eno to Swans to Tim Hecker, as well as a gorgeous reimagined score for Tarkovsky’s Solaris made with fellow Icelander Daniel Bjarnason for Bedroom Community. A U R O R A was partly inspired by a trip to the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, to create the video installation The Enclave with artist Richard Mosse and videographer Trevor Tweeten, a team with whom he has worked on numerous other video projects. As a result, the album is infused with West African-influenced rhythmic elements, giving his music a percussive power it has not had before.

Toronto audiences, prepare yourselves for a subsonic bass rumble like you’ve never heard or felt before. (Insert “thunder from Down Under” joke here.) Tickets for Friday’s Ben Frost show at The Garrison are still available via Ticketfly, Rotate This and Soundscapes. Doors are 9pm, Toronto cellist/composer Nick Storring opens with a solo set, and DJ Daniel Vila spins between sets.

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Another show happening Friday in T.O., that we wish we could clone ourselves and attend at the same time as Ben Frost, features another groundbreaking artist, but hailing from a little closer to home: Art Bergmann is Canada’s one-man proto-punk icon, our very own homegrown Lou Reed/Iggy Pop/Elvis Costello. Emerging from the Vancouver punk scene in the late '70s as a member of The Young Canadians – still one of this country’s finest rock power trios of all time – Bergmann was a prolific purveyor of poison-pen observational songwriting through most of the ‘80s and ‘90s, both as a solo artist and as a member of bands like Poisoned and Los Popularos. Now 61 and living in rural Alberta, Art is back with a stellar new 4-song EP, Songs for the Underclass, on Weewerk Records – his first new release in nearly 20 years. His last album, 1995’s What Fresh Hell is This? won a Juno – and also got him dropped from Sony. No one’s been through the Canadian major label wringer like Art Bergmann.

The new EP sees Art attacking our own domestic power structures like no one else can. The lead-off track, “Drones of Democracy,” is a seven-minute dirge-anthem that is, as he tells the Star’s Ben Rayner, his own “Cortez the Killer.” Hopefully he’s back for good – but catch him at the Great Hall Friday night while you can.