Acorn

Bio:

BIOGRAPHY

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.

Not quite biography nor musical folk tale, Glory Hope Mountain, recounts the early life of Klausener's Central-American-born mother. The album's song-stories harbour the triumphs, sorrow and adventures of a remarkable life. Armed with Garifuna-inspired rhythms, gut-strings, ukuleles, marimbas and the collective's best songwriting to date, The Acorn created a stirring musical document&183;

Since the release of Glory Hope Mountain, The Acorn have toured Europe and North America extensively and accrued a cord of critical love for both their live show and their recorded output. They've graced the cover of Canada's National music magazine, Exclaim and were nominated for the 2008 Polaris Award.

In the summer of 2009, the Acorn retreated from two years on the road to an isolated cottage in Northern Quebec to begin work on their third full-length album, No Ghost. Songs took shape at all hours, crafted from hazy late-night improvisations, early morning melodies pulled from the thinning threads of sleep. Modernity clashed with the bucolic via exploratory percussion, feedback, acoustic textures and the natural surrounding sounds. The band then traded trees for telephone poles to finish recording in a sweltering heatwave at Montreal's Treatment Room Studios (Plants & Animals, Angela Desveaux). There, the breezy ease of rural surrounds was buried under sweat-caked skin and cracked asphalt, birdsong drowned out by thick air and engine hum. Set for a June 2010 release, No Ghost is a recording swaddled in dichotomy: togetherness and isolation, acoustic and electric, destruction and restoration.

PRE-ORDER 'NO GHOST'

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			NO GHOST CDN Release Date June 1, 2010 Recorded at an isolated cottage in Northern Québec last summer, No Ghost is five friends lost in the woods, alone together in the decade's last summer. Swathed spaciousness and atmospheric feedback No Ghost is a fitting soundtrack to both the tranquillity of the country, and the sodium-lamp lit romance of city nights. PRE-ORDER LP/CD HERE from PAPER BAG RECORDS
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THE ACORN - Misplaced from Mitch Fillion (southernsouls.ca) on Vimeo.

THE ACORN - Cobbled From Dust from Mitch Fillion (southernsouls.ca) on Vimeo.

Crooked Legs video by Chris Mills

Flood Pt. 1 video by Chris Mills ......

Member Since:

September 03, 2004

Members:

Rolf Klausener: chirp
Jeff Debutte: neigh
T. Jeffrey Malecki : caw
Pat Johnson: cackle
Steven Lappano: bleat

        

MANAGEMENT

Leila Hebden | Dote Management
leilahebden@yahoo.co.uk

BOOKING

CANADA:
Steven Himmelfarb | Billions
himmelfarb@billions.com

USA:
Lisa O'Hara | High Road Touring
lisao@highroadtouring.com

EUROPE:
Rob Challice | CODA Agency
rob@codaagency.com

PUBLICITY

CANADA:
Darryl Weeks | Stage Fright Publicity
darryl@stagefrightpublicity.com

USA:
Brooke Black | Big Hassle
brooke@bighassle.com

EUROPE:
Duncan Jordan | Bella Union
duncan@bellaunion.com

Influences:

genetics, high-school bullies, love, the periodic table, Oedipal complexes, sibling rivalry, prep school, hopes and dreams for the future, crippling dread, engrams, that first and special kiss, the inexorable march of time, the urge to reproduce with others of our own species, that toxic cesspool out behind the Acorn childhood home and Karloff, the avuncluar and opinionated (though apparently hallucinated) swamp-toad who lived therein.

Sounds Like:

The splishsplashsplosh of aminotics sluicing through a rusty sewer grate onto the scalp of a morbidly content and sewer-dwelling Sigmund Freud... followed by... a chorus of centaur hoof-stomps and whinnies lured by smell to the gleaming pate of said subterranean psychoanalyst, the creatures' first meal in days... followed by... the gutteral eructation and dulcet digestion, contrapuntally configured, from the mythological intestine. or something like that....

Record Label:

Bella Union
Paper Bag Records
Kelp Records

Label Type:

Indie