Folk-beat singer/songwriter Riley Armstrong was born and raised in the remote Canadian farm town of Dapp, Alberta. Now 23, it was only five years ago that this fun, imaginative child of the quiet mid-north left a land of natural beauty and two fuzzy television channels for the melting pot metropolis of Vancouver to carn a degree in sound recording. And it is the extremes of two such influential settings -- one place overflowing with dreams and another jammed with realities -- that give the ten songs on Riley Armstrong's self-titled debut album their charming perspective and innovative style. Beneath the outer canvas containing Riley's soft voice, acoustic guitar, and sparkling percussion (live, mechanical, and sampled), there is a subtle world of unlikely banjoes, oboes, turntables, upright bass, and synthesizers that keep the music fresh with every listen. It's an unconventional and alluring approach that opens the mind, and a perfect fit for someone so innocently paradoxical as Armstrong. He's a self-confessing nature man who never really saw the ocean until a few years ago, a city-saturating artistic type who grew up staring at the detailed clouds above for inspiration while riding a tractor across his father's grain farm. Riley Armstrong is in the midst of his own great awakening, and his music reflects that breakthrough.