What is the big deal with math rock stars Angine de Poitrine? We try to find out

For decades the domain of serious-looking dudes in ripped jeans and T-shirts, math rock was long overdue a good glow-up. Where neighbouring genres embraced campy outfits and mysterious headgear – from The Residents’ massive eyeball heads to Slipknot’s latex horror masks and Daft Punk’s light-up robot helmets – math rock, rooted in angular guitar riffs in nerdy time signatures, has proven stubbornly immune to any form of sartorial flamboyancy. 

But that’s all changed thanks to Canadian self-styled “mantra-rock dada Pythagorean-cubist orchestra” Angine de Poitrine, a couple of “time-travelling space-voyagers” from the French-speaking city of Saguenay, Québéc, who look and indeed sound like some sort of terrifying fromage dream. 

Two unspeaking individuals in polka dot costumes and giant papier-mâché heads, decorated in mysterious triangular symbols, playing fast’n’loud asymmetrical instrumental jams as wildly wonky as their elongated noses, which swing so unnervingly hard to the beat that they look like they might snap off and fly across the room. Punk just got dafter.   

The Québécois twosome, who go by the aliases Khn de Poitrine (guitars, vocals) and Klek de Poitrine (percussion, vocals), have been having a huge moment since early February this year. Before then, few outside Canada knew of their existence. 

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But when Seattle indie radio station KEXP uploaded footage of the duo playing a live session filmed at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, the strange and explosive performance rapidly went viral. At time of writing – the day before release of the band’s avidly anticipated second album Angine de Poitrine Vol II – it’s approaching seven million views and rising. In a way that math rock almost never does, Angine de Poitrine are banging on the mainstream’s door. Even my 10-year-old daughter knows who they are, after her school class were shown a clip by their befuddled music teacher.  

Festivals around the world are clamouring to book them; newspapers and magazines are trying, and thus far failing, to get a precious exclusive interview. In 20 years of music journalism, I thought I had received every kind of knock back there is to be had from publicists gatekeeping the hottest music acts on the planet. But when I requested a chat with Angine de Poitrine for Big Issue, I was told that it’s “sadly off the cards at present… simply as their communication is via hand signals and extra-terrestrial language”. That’s definitely a first. 

What on earth is all the fuss about? The answer lies partly in microtonality. A word which will mean nothing to non-guitar geeks, but which, simply put, involves using a specialised instrument featuring extra frets, allowing for pitches smaller than a semitone (notes between notes, if you like). It’s what gives Angine de Poitrine’s breakneck riffs – played on a highly proggy twin-neck electric guitar and bass and looped and layered using pedals – their characteristically queasy, off-kilter and unusual texture and feel.

Veering from shredding metal to elasticated funk via Afro-pop and klezmer inflections, embellished with bursts of unintelligible Dalek-like vocals, Angine de Poitrine Vol II is an absolute riot of a listen. But in our very visually fixated online world, these Canucks’ real coup may well lie in shrewdly recognising that, for all their music’s obvious qualities, were it performed merely by two more serious-looking dudes in ripped jeans and T-shirts, it might have only reached the usual limited crowd. By instead getting their scissors and sewing kits out and matching their outsized jams with outsized outfits, it makes for a surrealist, pseudo-theatrical spectacle that’s as eye-catching as it is ear-grabbing.

And it adds an element of good old-fashioned mystery to the equation. Angine de Poitrine is “an anonymous artistic project,” they emphasise in their press statements, leaning into the enigma of it all. “Any speculation regarding the identities of its members is unverified and not endorsed by the band.” Welcome to The Masked Singer for 6 Music dads.  

So who really are Khn and Klek de Poitrine? Probably a pair of lesser-known guitar-heads from the Saguenay music scene. But why let the rumours stop there. Sting and Shaggy? Hall and Oates? Salt-N-Pepa? Robson and Jerome? The fun may lie in never knowing.   

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. 

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