Quebec’s latest breakout band wears paper-mâché masks with big phallic noses and polka-dot-speckled costumes that cowl their whole our bodies. Their music feels like a freewheeling jam session that wandered out of a dream and crashed right into a carnival journey. Their identities are a thriller.
Naturally, the web can’t look away.
Meet Angine de Poitrine, a duo from Saguenay, Que., whose performances went viral after Seattle’s KEXP shared a clip of their meandering math-rock set, filled with angular riffs and odd time signatures, in early February. Their present on the Trans Musicales competition in Rennes, France, has racked up greater than 2.8 million views, sparking bewildered tweets, response movies and fan theories about who — or what — is perhaps behind the masks.
Identified merely as Klek and Khn de Poitrine, the self-described “space-time voyagers” want to stay nameless. When interviewed on digital camera, they need to put on their whimsical costumes and “speak non-human” — through alien grunts and squeals — their publicist says.
In cellphone interviews, they use their actual voices.
“I received’t say we’re the most recent and freshest factor on the market, however perhaps there’s something completely different about us from the pattern proper now,” says Klek, who performs drums.
“There’s no language, there’s no political which means. It’s simply two freaking issues doing music. And that’s just about what turns me on. That’s what we wish to do. We wish to preserve it that manner.”
However sustaining that thriller has change into tougher as their viewers quickly grows.
The duo not too long ago wrapped a sold-out tour in France and are booked by way of the autumn, together with three at-capacity nights in Toronto in July.
“We’re each attempting to get our head out of the water proper now,” laughs Klek.
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The sudden consideration has pressured the duo to tug again on-line as their social media accounts are inundated with messages.
“There’s a little bit of a studying curve on learn how to handle social media when your band is flooding the web,” says Khn, who performs a double-necked guitar and performs barefoot, his fingers and toes painted white with black dots.
The net frenzy has additionally turned some followers into beginner detectives.
“Individuals are actually working onerous to seek out out who we’re,” says Klek, including that some have been profitable.
“It’s giving a vibe of voyeurism that’s type of bizarre for us. Like, individuals name us on our private telephones to speak with us like we’re large buddies. It’s not that we don’t like individuals. We, the truth is, actually love each one of many individuals.”
Klek and Khn are brothers “for the sake of the idea,” although not in actual life. Nonetheless, they’ve been enjoying music collectively since they had been 13, bouncing by way of a number of tasks — together with as “the rhythm part of a stoner rock band.”
“I’ll have spent extra time with Khn than my sister,” laughs Klek.
Angine de Poitrine started as a gag in 2019, when the pair had been booked to play the identical Saguenay venue twice in a single week and fearful no person would attend the second time. Their resolution: present up in wacky getups.
“It was a little bit of an Andy Kaufman-esque joke to play on individuals we knew personally — to throw a brand new musical proposition on the market and attempt to idiot them into considering it’s not us,” recollects Khn.
“We discovered it fairly humorous, so we simply saved it occurring.”
After a pandemic-era lull spent working building as music venues shuttered, the duo returned to the venture “pedal to the steel.” Their debut album, “Vol. 1,” arrived in 2024, with “Vol. 2” due April 3.
Angine de Poitrine has since loved a surge of native momentum, turning heads at festivals together with Pop Montreal, and being named 2025’s artist of the 12 months on the Gala alternatif de la musique indépendante du Québec.
The band’s title — which interprets to angina pectoris, a medical time period for chest ache — displays their sound: a heady, throbbing rush that rattles the center, thrilling and alarming without delay.
Khn performs a customized double-necked guitar-bass constructed to carry out microtones — the notes between notes in customary western scales.
They’ve lengthy been fascinated by Turkish, Japanese and Center Japanese music for his or her use of microtonal intervals, and had been additional impressed by prog band King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard’s 2017 album “Flying Microtonal Banana,” which explored the sound in a rock context.
“What higher option to give your self a problem?” Khn posits.
“Like, ‘Oh, I’m having plenty of enjoyable with 12 notes. Why don’t you’re employed with 24 now and see the place it may well go?’”
He provides their purpose is to experiment with the musical language by way of a “extra modal, trendy, jazz-rock method.”
On songs like “Sarniezz,” off “Vol. 2,” Khn performs a fab bass line and layers dissonant, serpentine guitar riffs over it with a loop pedal till the track explodes right into a frenetically paced, delirious swirl.
Although they might seem like an in a single day success, the pair says they spent 20 years biking by way of types — from rock to hip-hop and past — earlier than stumbling onto the peculiar chemistry of Angine de Poitrine.
“If you’ve been doing this for 20 years and attempting plenty of various things,” Klek says, “sooner or later you’re certain to place one thing on the market that’s going to talk to a bigger viewers.”
The masks would possibly assist, too.
“Typically I joke round and say we’re good clickbait,” Khn laughs.
“But when as soon as individuals have clicked, they’re happy with the factor musically talking — effectively, good for us and good for them.”