Godspeed You Black Emperor - Slow Riot For A New Zero Kanada

Hey, it's the first snow of the year today in middle Amerika. Guess what that means? Alcohol and seasonal affective disorder and fatty foods! Y'alls stoked?! What better to accompany the annual psychological bottom-hitting than some apochalyptic string-driven crescendo end of pain n suffering type jams from Montreal's finest!

______________

Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada is the first EP released by Godspeed You! Black Emperor on the Montreal-based record label Constellation Records in 1999 (catalogue number CST006) and was re-released by Kranky Records.

The album packaging makes only sparing reference to either the band or the album title: the outer packaging does not make any reference to Godspeed, but mentions them in the liner notes; the album title is only shown on the spine of the album cover. The song titles are not listed anywhere on the cover.

The cardboard album case is unusual in that it opens in the opposite direction of a conventional CD case; this is due to the Hebrew text being read from right to left.

The front of the album contains Hebrew characters, in transliterated form, "Tohu va bohu" (תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ). This phrase Tohu va bohu is used in both Genesis 1:2 and Jeremiah 4:23, and carries no agreed-upon meaning among theological circles. It could mean "wasteland" or "nothingness."^[1] The King James Bible translates it in Gen 1:2 as "without form, and void." The dots and dashes above the letters are called trope. They dictate the tune and intonation and are found in the Torah as well as the rest of the Hebrew Bible. On the inside cover, this text is put into greater context, with Jer 4:23–27 provided in both Hebrew and English (seemingly the Jewish Publication Society version):

²³ I beheld the earth,

And, lo, it was waste and void;

And the heavens, and they had no light.

²⁴ I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled,

And all the hills moved to and fro.

²⁵ I beheld, and, lo, there was no man,

And all the birds of the heavens were fled.

²⁶ I beheld, and, lo, the fruitful field was a wilderness,

And all the cities thereof were broken down

At the presence of the LORD,

And before His fierce anger.

²⁷ For thus saith the LORD:

The whole land shall be desolate;

Yet will I not make a full end.

The back of the EP contains a diagram with instructions in Italian on how to make a molotov cocktail.

HEAR