Credit: Far Out / Angine de Poitrine / Roxanne Shewchuk
In Saguenay, Quebec, where the Ha Ha River meets the Rivière, stands a curious pyramid. It is 21m tall and covered in a peculiar repetition of triangular tiles. Amid the pastoral surroundings, it feels more out of place than a mime artist on the radio. Angine de Poitrine are from nearby. It makes a lot of sense.
The grooving French-Canadians are Saguenay natives. While they might have exploded in a wave of viral recognition in recent weeks, the math rock duo, known only as Khn de Poitrine and Klek de Poitrine, have actually been playing music together since they were 13. All the while, the glaring pyramid has loomed large over their upbringing.
Now, pyramids and triangles are an obsession and the basis of their seemingly beloved sound. Starkly atonal Pythagoreanism is the central tenet of their alien musicality. Their DIY alien outfits are adorned with triangles and pyramids. The repetitive aesthetic of 3,000 ‘yield signs’ on the Ha Ha Pyramid is reflected in their penchant for looping and geometrical rhythms.
But beyond the surface similarities, there’s an even more tangible tie when it comes to the intentionalism of the Ha Ha Pyramid and Angine. The weird structure was essentially constructed to cheer people up. When the Ha Ha River flooded in 1996, the Grande-Baie area was devastated by damage and loss. Ten people died, and plenty of others were rendered homeless, jobless, and despairing.
So, the local artist Jean-Jules Soucy, wondering what role art could play in the aftermath of the tragedy, decided to build a big daft pyramid for a laugh. The community sought the help of Soucy specifically because of his “sense of humour” and “originality”. The wider online community have sought out Angine de Poitrine for similar reasons 30 years later.
Amid the turmoil of cataclysmic recent times, their daftness is like a refreshing plunge into the cool sea of human ingenuity on a stuffy day of stupidity of a far more sinister variety. It feels not unlike the breakwater of a giant pyramid following the flood that Saguenay once suffered. In fact, the 3,000 reflective ‘yield’ signs that Soucy’s big point is covered in translate to ‘help each other’ from French.
There’s even a similarity when it comes to the quirky search for deeper meaning that Dadaism always provokes, despite its intentionalism strictly pertaining to having no meaning at all. Soucy, perhaps like Angine with their hotdog infatuation, was keen to insist that his project did have a degree of meaning, but it was rather surreal.
“Look for nothing else in the project but the letter ‘d’ [or more accurately, the Greek delta Δ symbol],” he said in the lodged project pitch for the Ha Ha Pyramid.
“It’s the building block. It’s through the ‘d’ that ‘bdaa pq’ is recreated and that the corridor of humour is formed.”
He continues, “The corridor being that place where one passes from one form to another, from one concept to another… The passage is the letter ‘d.’ The passage is (pronounced seh) d.” That almost headache-like ‘huh’ that Soucy’s (perhaps crudely translated) rambling induces is also not too dissimilar to the experience of enjoying Angine.
The ‘bdaa pq’ is Québécois humour that essentially creates catchy nonsensical wordplay out of the alphabet. In short, though loaded with symbolism, the whole conceit of the Ha Ha Pyramid is to offer something new to a despairing town, caught up in a recent tragedy, and turn the grieving into a dazzlingly incongruous laugh. Anything else is open to interpretation.
Angine de Poitrine grew up in the shadow of this great big pointed absurdity that genuinely proved pivotal in rebuilding a devastated area, and intentionally or otherwise, they appear to have channelled a great deal of that into their act.
While they might have formed on a whim when, in a previous guise, they were booked to play the same venue twice in a week, and decided to offer the crowd something different, you sense the whim drew on the depth of plenty of pent-up ideas. While they might now be joyous aliens, they’re very difficult to divorce from the town that spawned them when you dig into the inherent surrealism of Saguenay.
Beyond this pivotal pyramid, there’s the massive dystopian aluminium plant that lingers on the outskirts of town, the fact that the local river is literally called the Ha Ha, and plenty of other oddities tying the town and band for any Angine-enthused tourist to explore – just don’t be a bloody humbug and attempt to unmask them in the process. The world needs its curious little laughs and triangular mysteries, just ask Soucy.
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