AWAY FROM THE NOISE
LORYN THE NATURE TRAIL / VANCOUVER VS LONDON...
I don’t know if it’s just in my blood or it’s because of where I grew up but I’m just an outdoors person. I love and need to get out. I basically grew up outside and outdoors was more home than indoors. My home was Deep Cove, North Vancouver and as a kid having the mountain, lakes, space and wildlife (also some pretty fucking scary animals) was unbelievable to mess around in, I would be out playing from morning till dark and come home with half the forest in my hair. I always got such an energy from that open space. I was a hugely, annoyingly active kid. My Mom put me in gymnastics from a young age, I think possibly because she thought it would help to wear me out making her life a little easier. Mom and Dad were very different people. My Mom had a very logical, practical idea of what life and career she wanted for me and my Dad was more organic and took a day to day attitude to it. My Dad is where the music came from. He secretly took me to singing lessons as he knew my mom wouldn’t feel like it was a good use of the very little money they had. Mom knew nothing of Words and images by LORYN
the lessons until she came to a school performance where I was singing. I opened my mouth and her tears came in buckets. From that point, she was completely on board that music could be an option for me in a career. At nineteen I needed to up the game on pushing a career in music forward. British music had always played a big part in what I was listening to growing up. My Dad had so much love for British artists. I thought that if I wanted to make music seriously then I need to go where all that was at. So having never been on a plane before I headed to the U.K. to make music. I started in Liverpool and moved to London a year or two later. I'd obviously been to cities before but never lived in one. I love it but the outdoor space where I live in London is pretty different from living on the side of a mountain haha. I guess it was a subconscious thing when I was growing up, but if life got too loud or worries crept into my world for me I would be able to head out onto the mountain where no one was around and run my mind calm again. I never realised 28
how much this was a thing until I moved to a city where getting out somewhere open was a little trickier. It really does help me keep an eye on my mind, which is a fucking mess sometimes and I’ve found that I need to listen when it starts fidgeting a little too much. It’s like when things get hectic for me that’s how I'd calm myself. In Canada, I'd get up early, leave my phone at home and Forest Gump it around a place called The Baden Powell Trail. It's a huge 25 mile trail through some of the most incredible woods on the planet. I was lucky enough to find a place called Highgate Wood in London a few years back and it’s become my new Baden Powell Trail. I head there for a run through the woods once every couple of weeks (more if I can) to top up my energy and untangle my mind a little. It isn’t the same as Deep Cove of course but it does give me the same feeling and at least there aren’t bears in Highgate Wood (that I know of) and not being chased by a gigantic mountain lion is one thing less to fucking worry about from the off! LORYN's debut EP "Less Is More" is out now.
