This nine-piece Montreal collective sketches large-scale sonic landscapes using everything from strings to samples. Exceedingly plush and atmospheric, Slow Riot funnels a dramatic undercurrent through their music, adding an undeniably cinematic quality--especially in a section featuring the paranoid rants of a street person. The result is a grand and swirling melange with a sweeping scope and an elevating sense of tension. --S. Duda

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Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada may last only half an hour, but in that time it imparts an internal experience akin to that of watching a cast-of-thousands Hollywood epic. Godspeed You Black Emperor! are a Montreal-based nine-piece ensemble that uses massed strings, ringing electric guitars, and martial drums to evoke endless vistas and stir strong emotions. "Moya" opens with a solemn drone overlaid with resonant violin overtones, then builds to a crashing, unapologetically melodramatic climax. The CD's second (and final) selection, "Blaise Bailey Finegan III," is more ambitious. Like a director who grabs his audience's tear ducts with both fists, the group inserts field recordings of a ranting paranoiac between sweeping spaghetti-Western passages that rise to exhilarating multiple crescendos, then fall away to ghostly, echoed violins. --Bill Meyer