The first full-length from the dark-witted Toronto duo of Michael Barry and Cameron Groves is a sexy/nasty slab of droning electro-pop sleaze, and my new favourite thing. Imagine Beat Happening, A Place to Bury Strangers and the Neon Judgement doing lots of drugs together in a Hamburg fetish bar and you'll get the gist of this dour gem. Acidic monotone vocals, battering drum-machine beats and a whole lotta art-house style caught in a radioactive glow of sawing violin and over-cranked guitar. If "Catherine Deneuve" and "Big Fires" don't make you wanna pogo, there's something fundamentally wrong with you, and "The Tunnel" is just freakin' evil.

NxEW May 6/09
Review: The Torrent's debut, Leonora Moreno - Electronic Post Punk Retro 80's Drone
by Dashiell Brown

Easily one of the most exciting releases of the year, Toronto's The Torrent are Cameron Groves and ex Hidden Camera's Mike Barry who left his band because it "felt like more of a job." A fuse of early post punk and new wave (supposedly this might be considered "No Wave,") The Torrent are not so much about rehashing old sounds, as blending the old with the new giving birth to a whole new post-millenial baby, what with minimal drum machines, atonal singing, scales and modes outside of conventional Western ones, not to mention the droning and Krautrock styles suggestive of the uberprolific Stereolab, and you have an idea of why this album should be on the top of your playlist. Cameron Groves also adds some intense violin to create the droning effect that I love with so much Scandinavian music, Swedish bands like Garmarna and Hedningarna. Other bands that come to mind are Early Jesus and Mary Chain, Joy Division, Bauhaus, B52's, Beat Happening, Magnetic Fields, Public Image Ltd., etc. This is crazy good. Crazy good you can dance to, or drug out to, either way, you'd be a fool to overlook it.

ChartAttack Apr 23/09
Pumping: The Torrent - Leonora Moreno

This band apparently isn't named after the infamous internet download protocol, but a 1926 Greta Garbo film. So it makes sense that the film buffs in Toronto duo The Torrent's (which includes Mike "E.B." Barry of The Hidden Cameras) debut album is full of artsy dance-rock.
Point of interest: According to the band's website, violinist/vocalist Cameron Groves made two of the band's music videos using "vintage film footage, pulsing white boxes and flying cat heads." Weird.

Leonora Moreno also turned up on an album art blog in May 09.