Canada seems to be the land of amazing ambient metal duos. Montreal has Menace Ruine, and Toronto has Nadja, a formidable couple that churns out huge-sounding, bass and electronics-driven doom that draws your gaze up towards the stars just as old cathedral ceilings humble the faithful and make them think of the Almighty.
[audio:http://www.wordthecat.com/images/nadja%20-%20Radiance%20Of%20Shadows.mp3]

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French duo Trop Tard make straight-faced, Suicide-esque, synth-and-guitar electro tunes that sound like dark rituals performed in the catacombs beneath the streets of Paris. Repetitive, bleak, and cold, this is dance music for the shambling undead.

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The Ritz is a Chicago-based underground hip-hop duo comprised of Apoc and Rel. For their first full-length album — The Night of Day — they took their inspiration from the themes and aesthetics of 1940s and 50s film noir, with Rel creating a collection of beats that demonstrate his range as a producer. Apoc handles the majority of the rapping, jumping seamlessly from one style to the next as the album shifts tone and tempo.

Download The Ritz track, Blown.
[audio:http://www.fanaticpromotion.com/projects/theritz/mp3/theritz-langstonbukowski.mp3]

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Nine months ago Sydney couple Matt Cribb and Bree Carter decided they’d take their relationship to the next level. They started making beats. After posting two home-recorded tracks on MySpace as WOW, they got the attention of New York-based independent label Metal Postcard who agreed to release the duo’s first official pressing. Since then, they’ve signed with Sydney based Levity, and are currently fine-tuning their live show for their own E.P launches and a support slot for Melbourne band (and Metal Postcard label-mates) The Emergency. I really liked WOW from first listen, but it was their live show that made me a true devotee. At first glance WOW look well rehearsed and seem dismissive of their audience but the more you watch, as they bounce ideas off one another mid song exchanging quick glances and mouthed directions, you realise that their dismissivenessis actually just sheer concentration. Having performed together for such a short period, they are still wary of each note they sing or play, but rather than afraid or embarrassed by their inexperience they seem to really enjoy it. And why not?! They have already had considerable successes. And while their dark space disco, monotone vocals and home-produced fuzzsonics might not be for everyone, they are certainly well on their way to bigger things. Let’s just hope they don’t break up!

When did you start making music together?
‘Late last year we just started messing around with all kinds of electronic stuff and computers. Even though we had always owned instruments, we had never really tried to do anything together, but for some reason when we did, it all just clicked. The songs came out really easily and a few weeks later we were playing our first show. We actually booked the show before we had even figured out if we could do it all live or not’.

Do relationship politics ever interrupt practice sessions?
(Laughs) ‘Yes, actually relationship politics DO interrupt practice sessions, recording sessions, musical ideas … actually just about every part of the whole process! But in the end that’s what makes us, us in a way. I guess the WOW sound is based around our relationship, since it’s where we started and how everything came about’.

How did the partnership with Levity come about?
‘Our manager introduced us to Mel from Levity and she liked what she heard. A few days later they came down to a show in Bondi where we got really drunk on stage and had a great show. The rest is history’.

What inspires you to write music?
‘It can be quite varied. It can be an impulsion (either musically or a particular theme) that inspires a song to start being written, or it can be a feeling or thought or opinion that needs to come out, and logically a way to express this is through music. Good times, bad times, death, destruction, rainbows, sun, sand … It can be anything and the musical process starts in a number of different ways. Sometimes it’s a simple as a kick and snare drum that ends up spiraling into a two-hour party jam and at the end there’s enough stuff recorded for a whole song’.

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Yellow Fever are a great duo from Austin that harkens back to the girl-fronted indie bands of the 90s. At times Breeders-ish, at others referencing garag-y sounds from other eras, their simple and heartfelt songs remind us of why we all thought mismatched Converse and unkempt androgyny was so cool in the first place.

Listen to the Yellow Fever song, Cats and Rats.
[audio:http://soundbites.typepad.com/files/01_cats-and-rats.mp3]

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No wave is alive and well, if Brooklyn duo Talk Normal are any indication. Drummer Andrya Ambro keeps things cohesive with surprisingly precise percussion, occasionally banging on such things as an electric guitar and an old iron pipe rigged with contact mics, while guitarist Sarah Register coaxes some unnerving and discordant noises from her axe and array of pedals. The two take turns shouting abstract and absurdist lyrics with voices like hi-tech valkyries from a futurist nightmare.

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No Age are doing something different to the mass of noise-laden, guitar-drum duos canvasing the lo-fi airwaves at the moment. I’m just not sure quite what. Their album, Nouns, is receiving top-rate reviews after sell-out crowds after screaming, obsessive fans. The music is simply massive: a vast landscape of heat haze, somehow both tranquil and manic, punctuated by singer Dean Sprouts backdrop of barely intelligible vocals and Randall’s distorted, archaic sounding drums.

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The Raveonettes are like Jack and Meg (The White Stripes) on psychedelic drugs, twirling around in slow-motion at an Andy Warhol party back in the day. The duo, known for laying down echoic harmonies over fuzzy guitars and synth textures, released their forth studio album, Lust Lust Lust, in February 2008. The album is pretty well balanced with dark, gritty tracks like Aly, Walk With Me, and up-tempo poppy numbers like You Want The Candy. Earlier this year, the group participated in a cool online campaign for GAP called The Sound of Color, in which they created an exclusive song based on the combination of black and white. They have been busy touring Europe and are scheduled to play a US show on June 21st at the Make Music Pasadena: A Fête de la Musique event. Bassist and vocalist Sharin announced last week that she was pregnant and on doctor’s advice will not be able to tour with the band possibly for the rest of this year. However, they recently announced that Sharin’s sister Loui will be taking her place, completing all of their show obligations over the summer.

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