ANGEL ISLAND

The Acorn (from their bio):

Ottawa used to be a lum­ber town. For some rea­son, it got cho­sen as Canada’s cap­i­tal. Beneath the fed­eral veneer, its rural ori­gins linger, drenched in woodsmoke, bar-brawls and glint­ing saw blades. Two hours down river from Mon­treal, the woods get a lit­tle thicker and the air a lit­tle cleaner. It’s a place where the city lights merge with con­stel­la­tions, and where The Acorn was born.

A dis­ci­ple of folk with a strong pen­chant for exper­i­men­tal pop music, Rolf Klausener started writ­ing under The Acorn moniker in the sum­mer of 2002. Ini­tially an excuse to teach him­self home-recording, these furtive exper­i­ments would even­tu­ally become The Acorn’s first full-length release, a mel­liflu­ous, electro-acoustic trib­ute to the Ottawa region, The Pink Ghosts.

Inspired by the road and the com­mu­ni­ties they dis­cov­ered beyond their bucolic cap­i­tal city, The Acorn made every effort to travel the coun­try, tour­ing inde­pen­dently and as often as they could. Through­out 2005, they forged ties with a new, bur­geon­ing inde­pen­dent Cana­dian music scene which grew to include Ohbi­jou, Bell Orchestre, Tim­ber Tim­bre, Great Lake Swim­mers, Snail­house and many more.

After sev­eral inde­pen­dent releases, the band was signed to Toronto’s indie strong­hold, Paper Bag Records. In 2007 and after months of inter­views and ethno-musicological research, the band cre­ated its most ambi­tious and widely-acclaimed record to date, Glory Hope Moun­tain.

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/theacorn

Leif Volle­bekk (from his bio):
A visit to his Plateau apart­ment in Mon­treal reveals an end­less col­lec­tion of records from Bob Dylan to Ray Charles. An avid fan of vinyl, Leif wrote half the songs for his own, “Inland”, while study­ing Ice­landic and Phi­los­o­phy in Reyk­javik, Ice­land. The other half were writ­ten upon his return home, where he recorded and self-produced the album a short time later at Montreal’s Break­glass stu­dio (Wolf Parade, Patrick Wat­son, Besnard Lakes). Arranged and orches­trated entirely by Leif, “Inland” is pri­mar­ily cen­tered around Leif’s acoustic gui­tar and story-telling, fea­tur­ing string quar­tets on occa­sion, piano at times, and splashes of har­mon­ica and drums.

“Inland” was released by Nevado Records (Bahamas, Yukon Blonde) on Jan­u­ary 19 2010 (Canada), gar­ner­ing rave reviews and crit­i­cal acclaim both in Canada and inter­na­tion­ally. With upcom­ing releases in Europe and USA, Leif will be busy tour­ing the world for the rest of 2010. In between tours, he is also work­ing on a sec­ond album with famed pro­ducer Howard Bil­er­man (Arcade Fire, God­speed…) at Hotel2Tango in Mon­treal, which will be released some­time in 2011.

Read more: http://www.myspace.com/leifvollebekk