Recently, Angine de Poitrine had to get new heads. The alien-looking rock duo were not in fact born with the monochrome polka-dotted complexions and extruded faces that millions of listeners have obsessed over since they went viral this spring. Guitarist Khn has a long, twangable nose and double-necked guitar\/bass; drummer Klek\u2019s dangly proboscis bounces along to his stone-cold playing. Both are apparently 333-year-old time travellers primarily inspired by a solemn musical quartet of monkeys from Borneo. Over months of hard gigging, their handmade papier-mache masks had gone soggy from the musicians\u2019 laboured breathing. \u201cWhen I looked at mine, I was like: Jesus Christ, did I really play that much with this?\u201d says Klek. \u201cIt was falling apart. It was like putting a Christmas box outside when it\u2019s raining.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when the masks disintegrated, it was important that their more robust replacements still looked lived-in. \u201cPeople have fallen in love with the band as it\u2019s always been,\u201d says Khn. \u201cSo we\u2019re not gonna change everything [because] we have a bigger budget now. We\u2019re emotionally attached to our old beaten-up costumes that have been in car accidents and are full of snot. We think people love the fact that you can feel they have lived.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In just a few months, Angine de Poitrine\u2019s lore has entered the annals of rock iconography alongside the likes of Kiss, the Residents and Daft Punk. In February, US radio station KEXP published a video of the anonymous duo performing at a French festival: 27 minutes of ludicrously tight, swerving, looping grooves played by two figures who look like some ungodly union of Jar Jar Binks and Dada pioneer Hugo Ball. There was undoubtedly a novelty factor, but novelty alone can\u2019t fuel you to 13.7m YouTube views. Those are pop-star numbers for genuinely freaky music, a prog-club sound that takes its wayward undertow from Khn\u2019s microtonal musicianship \u2013 playing the notes between the notes, a mode historically found in eastern music \u2013 and Klek\u2019s sewing-machine needle drumming.<\/p>\n
Since forming in 2019, Angine have rejected attempts to unmask them and generally make media appearances in full regalia, emitting alien gargles deciphered by an \u201cinterpreter\u201d. So it\u2019s a surprise when the Francophone duo appear by video from their Quebec hometown of Saguenay one Tuesday morning in terrestrial getup, in their respective terrestrial homes, speaking English and looking like any two punk lifer dudes from your own local scene. Khn permanently twirls an unlit cigarette. Going Angine mode takes too much work for a 10am call. They still do their own body paint for gigs. \u201cIt\u2019s funny, sometimes we\u2019re playing shows just 25 minutes, but just preparing usually takes an hour,\u201d says Klek.<\/p>\n
In April, they released their second album, Vol II, cementing their reputation as alternative music\u2019s most talked-about thing apart from perhaps Geese. It delighted prog nerds tickled by the audible traces of Frank Zappa and Gentle Giant; riff maniacs who have made a cult out of King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard; and \u2013 the ultimate sign of success \u2013 children giddy at the whole package. Their rise is a feelgood story of human craftsmanship and fun for its own sake thriving in a miserable landscape of cruelty and AI slop. Joy itself might be the TikTok clip of two kids who attached cable ties to their guitar necks<\/a>, creating microtonal frets so they could properly cover Angine\u2019s new song Sarniezz. \u201cI\u2019m proud of that,\u201d says Klek, \u201cof people enjoying it like it\u2019s supposed to be.\u201d<\/p>\n Angine de Poitrine perform at Club Soda in Montreal, Quebec, last month. Photograph: Samuel Snow<\/p>\n But they\u2019re nonplussed by the hype: even the luthier who made Khn\u2019s microtonal double-necked guitar has become a figure of obsession; no wonder the creator of their new masks wants to remain unknown. \u201cIt\u2019s only music. I\u2019m not saving people\u2019s lives,\u201d Klek continues. \u201cI\u2019m just playing drums. One comment on KEXP said: \u2018Now there\u2019s a reason to live.\u2019 I was like: calm down, man. Go kiss your mother or something \u2013 that\u2019s a reason to live.\u201d<\/p>\n Rabid fans have worked out who they are, but the fun of Angine is that they\u2019re mysterious and inventive. The sleuthing, says Klek, makes him feel like when he asked for an Xbox for Christmas as a kid. \u201cI really badly wanted to know if I had it, so I undo the tapes on my wrappings and take a look. It was like: oh yeah, I had it. Then I closed it back up and for a week I was like: why did I do that? Where\u2019s the surprise now? There is a thing that is interesting in not knowing. And you find out who we are and you\u2019re like \u2026 oh. We\u2019re not Lady Gaga. We\u2019re not Elton John. We\u2019re two random dudes.\u201d<\/p>\n I was prepared to spend an hour freestyling with two characters about their alien lore: Angine\u2019s love of hotdogs, triangles, what they\u2019ve called their \u201cexotic tans\u201d. But the duo are resolutely chill: Khn nonchalant, Klek analytical. If anything, they resist burnishing the backstory. That\u2019s for fans to evolve. \u201cI\u2019m down with what people are lore-ing about the project,\u201d says Klek. \u201cIt\u2019s fuckin\u2019 free, it\u2019s open source!\u201d In that sense, they seem a lot like King Gizz, another group of friends that started on a lark and let fans play in their world<\/a>.<\/p>\n More revealing than Angine\u2019s government identities is the world that shaped them: 21 years ago, in nearby La Baie, Khn, then 13, and Klek, 14, met through a mutual friend. He knew a guy with a drum kit and told Khn: \u201cWe should play music with him. Why not?\u201d says Khn. \u201cI ended up at Klek\u2019s mother\u2019s place making music in the basement, and we started doing that for \u2026 for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n They were obsessed with goofing off musically, young prog fans revelling in playing complicated music and satirising Gaga, Bob Marley and the Wailers, Zappa; even privately forming a tribute band to the pop-punk outfit of a high-schooler they knew. \u201cWe always do caricatures to get a laugh,\u201d says Khn. \u201cIt\u2019s a spasm we have often.\u201d Outside the basement, they roamed the forest. \u201cGetting lost, getting hurt,\u201d he says. \u201cPutting your snow shoes on, eating a handful of mushrooms, getting lost in the woods, drying out your clothes besides a fire and burning your mittens.\u201d<\/p>\n A triangular sensation \u2026 Khn and Klek after dark. Photograph: Samuel Snow<\/p>\n The incorporated Saguenay area had a great DIY arts scene. Khn was obsessed with a \u201cmathy, rocky, bluesy, bit wonky rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u201d band called Deux Pouilles en Cavale, whose drum kit was partially made of trash. They loved le parc, another hard-firing instrumental band. The region was surrounded by logging and aluminium factories: did those industrial pistons infiltrate the sound? \u201cPeople in Saguenay are down for intense, loud music,\u201d says Khn. \u201cIf you want to stand out, you have to blend all those influences together.\u201d He cites prog metal band Voivod, until now the area\u2019s biggest musical export. \u201cThey bring influences from punk rock, from prog, from a lot of different subgenres. Maybe people here don\u2019t have those barriers.\u201d<\/p>\n Klek and Khn kept playing together, alongside their mutual pal, but didn\u2019t form a band until their early 20s. \u201cFor a while, we didn\u2019t take it seriously,\u201d says Klek. \u201cIt was just like playing with Legos.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell,\u201d says Khn, \u201cmaybe that\u2019s true for you. I was 12 when I picked up a guitar and I instantly became very serious about it. I always had the intention to make a band.\u201d He played with plenty of other serious musicians, but it never compared to noodling in the basement with Klek and their mate. Klek\u2019s resistance drove Khn to distraction. \u201cIt was frustrating for me when the most interesting stuff I was doing was with two guys who had no ambition whatsoever.\u201d<\/p>\n Klek couldn\u2019t see himself as a musician. \u201cI didn\u2019t have idols or people to follow in their path,\u201d he says. He was more into woodwork. In time, he realised what a vast part of his life music occupied. \u201cI did a lot of jobs, but never did driving trucks or planting trees as much as playing music.\u201d<\/p>\n One day, when Klek was living in Montreal, he called Khn, living in Rimouski, more than 300 miles away. Khn had been sending him clips of his jams. \u201cHe said: \u2018That was actually pretty good,\u2019\u201d Khn recalls. \u201c\u2018You know, we could have started a band.\u2019 Sometimes you just feel like, hey! I could have done this?\u201d He mimics the penny dropping: \u201cOh, I could do this, it\u2019s not too late.\u201d<\/p>\n When Klek said that, Khn recalls, \u201cI was like a puddle of gas, and I just needed that spark. That\u2019s when I showed up at his mother\u2019s place on Monday at 7am and I spent the entire week there grinding away: let\u2019s do it now, because maybe tomorrow he\u2019s gonna say maybe not.\u201d<\/p>\n Their first band ran from about 2013. By 2019, Khn and Klek were both back in the \u201cspecial\u201d Saguenay area. (Montreal, says Klek, has \u201ctoo many people, too many exhausts, too much cement.\u201d Their main band had already played a gig one week when they got an opportunity to play another days later. \u201cIt\u2019s a small town,\u201d says Khn. \u201cYou can\u2019t play the same venue in a two-week span.\u201d They had a microtonal side project \u2013 Klek had made the guitar himself \u2013 and just needed a disguise.<\/p>\n Sign of the times \u2026 Angine de Poitrine. Photograph: Samuel Snow<\/p>\n Their previous full-time band had a reputation for making gigantic papier-mache structures to be destroyed in the pit. \u201cLike a huge-ass pi\u00f1ata, bigger than everyone,\u201d says Klek. So, says Khn, \u201cit was natural for us to think: we need costumes\u201d. They stuck their hands in buckets of flour and water without any plan: \u201cEvery aspect of the aesthetic was like: oh yeah, we could do this! Ha ha ha!\u201d One of the spare guitar necks Klek had used for their homemade guitar was covered in polka dots \u2013 not designed that way, says Khn, but clearly the DIY handiwork of \u201ca guy on drugs trying to kill time. We thought: we\u2019re gonna put polka dots everywhere, it\u2019s gonna be funny.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou do it, then you think later!\u201d says Klek, and they both crack up. They retired their previous band in 2022 as Angine took over, then released Angine\u2019s debut, Vol 1, in 2024.<\/p>\n Klek and Khn are lifelong jammers. Most Angine songs start that way. \u201cWe improvise and make a lot of crap, then you have a little spark,\u201d says Khn. \u201cA lot of the songs on the second album, I found one riff that\u2019s got something to it, then you build from that.\u201d<\/p>\n Building up these loops, says Klek, \u201cthere\u2019s a feeling of anxiousness or something that comes with the repetitions, the frictions with the microtones. We\u2019re always playing with that feeling, and tension and release.\u201d Using a loop pedal live keeps them in line, says Khn. \u201cIf I start from this idea, I have to find a coherent way to move away from it.\u201d Otherwise, he says, they have a \u201ctendency to make songs that go from A to Z without coming back to A or B\u201d.<\/p>\n Angine are open about being inspired by King Gizzard\u2019s 2017 album Flying Microtonal Banana. Microtonal virtuosos have been going viral<\/a> a lot recently: Maddie Ashman, Bryan Deister. The appeal, Klek thinks, is that \u201cit sounds new for people\u201d, though he finds it weird given that this musical system predates the 12-semitone western scale. He can\u2019t say whether listeners are finding it a reassuring counter to AI-generated culture. \u201cSince we are \u2018popular\u2019 in a certain way \u2013 it\u2019s strange for me to say that \u2013 we don\u2019t spend much time on the internet because we have a tight schedule. And sometimes people are \u2026 how can I say \u2026 angry about Angine. So we\u2019re like: let\u2019s not go on Facebook. People can say what they want.\u201d Khn grins.<\/p>\n Since day one, the duo have recorded and made videos at the longstanding underground music incubator Centre d\u2019Exp\u00e9rimentation Musicale in nearby Chicoutimi. Creative director Guillaume Thibert says the scene was surprised by the way Angine exploded. \u201cIt\u2019s historical, it\u2019s completely amazing,\u201d he says. \u201cEspecially that they don\u2019t compromise on their art. At their shows, it\u2019s nice to see 70-year-olds, young families with children, hard rock and electronic music fans.\u201d But after it was revealed that acts including Geese and Mk.gee had paid an agency to generate fake TikTok<\/a> accounts using their music, alternative music fans have become suspicious of unusually quick rises to fame. Angine scoff at any idea they\u2019ve used these schemes. \u201cWe don\u2019t even have time for our own TikTok account,\u201d says Klek. \u201cSo we definitely won\u2019t spend time for [companies] to make something. We\u2019re really into live playing. That\u2019s pretty much it.\u201d<\/p>\n The strangest thing about their success, he says, is how people have started talking to them: \u201cLife doesn\u2019t revolve around me. Yeah, I\u2019m doing music and people like it, yeah I\u2019m proud of it. But talk to me about your dog!\u201d And they still have day jobs. Klek claims to work inside the yellow arches of the McDonald\u2019s logo; Khn has a small business, which he runs from the road. \u201cI love it and I wouldn\u2019t want to get rid of it.\u201d<\/p>\n This week\u2019s UK tour dates could probably have sold out 10 times over; their autumn tour also sold out instantly. Khn admits to feeling the pressure. \u201cI can\u2019t say we\u2019re being lighthearted and just doing this to have fun, because when you feel this hype, people have anticipation and you\u2019ve got to give them the best. I can\u2019t say my thoughts have been clear of any doubts about: what can I do to make myself a better musician? But what I come back to is that people have fallen in love with the rawness and simplicity.\u201d<\/p>\n The difficulty of playing beneath the masks reflects the band\u2019s ethos to push themselves. \u201cWe love challenges,\u201d says Klek. \u201cWhen it\u2019s too easy, we instinctively make it harder.\u201d What the headpieces lack in breathability they make up for in protection: \u201cIt\u2019s easier for me to put this on and go in front of 4,000 people than to do it as myself.\u201d When Klek stresses out about tough shows, Khn reminds him: \u201c\u2018People had a whole lot of fun.\u2019 And that\u2019s what\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n The pair have never been to the UK before this week. Travelling through airport customs with the masks is fine, they say: they live in suitcases. \u201cBut the guitar gets funny questions because I carry it in a sleeping bag and it looks like a dead body,\u201d says Khn. As time travellers, surely that means the 12-hour flight from Quebec will be a jetlag-free click of the fingers. \u201cAs time travellers, it\u2019s even worse!\u201d Klek protests. \u201cWe\u2019re always jetlagged! A minute passes and we\u2019re like: \u2018Oh! It felt like a year!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Angine de Poitrine tour the UK from 10 May, Europe from 16 May and play festivals this summer.<\/p>\n