Propelled to fame by a viral performance on the Live on KEXP YouTube channel (link below) that has clocked up 14 million views in 3 months, Angine de Poitrine are a French-Canadian math rock duo from Saguenay, Quebec, who make weirdo microtonal math rock that is stupendously complex and also a massive vibe.
Angine de Poitrine’s UK debuts in Leeds, London and Bristol, and larger shows in October, all sold out in seconds, literally. Playing from their albums Vol. 1 (2024) and Vol. II (2026) in London the duo took to a stage boiling over with a heady anticipation like to a Vegas comeback show with the sweaty energy of a metal gig, with an orgy of crowd-surfing and pogo-ing in circle pits, and a crowd actually singing along to the complicated math rock riffs like it was Hey Jude.
In an era of digital utilitarianism saturated with AI and disposable content Angine de Poitrine have tapped into a need for something completely dada. Their human identities are unknown. Khn de Poitrine (with his monster double-neck microtonal guitar-bass) and Klek de Poitrine (on drums) present themselves as alien brothers from another planet. Broadcasting in an incomprehensible form of Quebecois they manifest as Dadaist pierrots in oversize white and black polka dot costumes with giant papier mache heads with provocative proboscis-like noses. Their knotty instrumental songs have weird titles like SARNIEZZZ and MATA ZYKLEK that turn out to be literal transcriptions of Saguenay slang: FABIENK is just “well, I gotta do it” and SHERPA is basically “sais pas” as in “I don’t know!”
Like a sewing machine and an umbrella on an operating table, the music is similarly a not-so-chance encounter between the exotic and the familiar, wonderfully oddball but dressed up to seem more strange than it is. The ribald guitar and basslines make use of quarter tones and Middle Eastern and Indian scales to spice up riffs that could easily enough pass for Primus, Cardiacs, or any of the other familiar references people have noticed from Clown Core to King Crimson that help make the music palatable while still sounding readily futuristic. You may have found your timelines flooded with Angine de Poitrine reaction videos explaining the microtonal elements and the rhythmic complexities and time signatures. The duo use a Boss RC-600 to capture multiple loops with a DB(90) metronome so both Khn and Klek are in perfect sync. Usually we start off in suspense, unable to work out where ‘the one’ is going to fall. The parts build up, develop, and then pivot: Sarniezz establishes a 12/8 rhythm and then they switch up into 4/4 over the same loops. This has an incendiary effect in live performance, and each time each song pivots the crowd is launched into feverish excitement. It’s musically straightforward to understand, devilishly hard to execute, and fantastically effective at inciting a mosh-pit.
To repeat, it’s stupendously complex and also a massive vibe. It’s not all hype. The phenomenon of Angine de Poitrine, such as it is, explodes that old cynical record industry ethos that everything has to be bland and patronising to be popular. We respond to Angine de Poitrine’s particular gimmick in the same way we responded to the red-and-white colour theme of the White Stripes or the LED robot helmets of Daft Punk. When you watch Angine’s viral KXEP show, you can’t help it but you have to find out what the hell you’re looking at—then you stick around because there’s something more to it. Like the Dadaist principles that developed in response to the First World War as referenced in the Angine de Poitrine aesthetic, these earlier duos are each a reaction against robotic humanity, expressed respectively through Jack White’s fondness for analogue technology and in Daft Punk’s paradoxically unifying use of electronic saturation.
In Angine de Poitrine we intuitively respond to the intimacy of two people performing with such a level of virtuosity, intensity and joyous mania that plenty of people are welcoming it as something AI could never achieve.
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