Angine De Poitrine - Vol. 1

If you have been anywhere near the internet recently, you already know. Two masked figures in head-to-toe polka-dot costumes, locked into one of the most hypnotic and dazzling performances anyone has witnessed in years. A KEXP session sitting at over 11 million views on YouTube. Dave Grohl calling himself obsessed. Used copies of this album selling for $600 on Discogs, sitting ahead of Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny in terms of demand. The band is Angine de Poitrine, a duo from Saguenay, Quebec, and Vol. I is where it all began.

Klek and Khn de Poitrine have been playing together for over two decades. They are completely anonymous, performing and conducting interviews in oversized papier-mâché masks and their own invented language. Khn built the band's defining instrument himself by literally sawing extra frets onto a guitar to create a microtonal instrument, and that instrument is the key to everything. Drawing from years of deep listening to Indian, Japanese, Arabic, Indonesian, and Turkish music, the duo have developed a sound that uses microtonality not as a novelty or effect but as the actual language of the music, a dense and disorienting blend of math rock, prog, jazz, and Zappa-like complexity that sounds genuinely like nothing else. Comparisons have landed on King Crimson, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, and Sun Ra, but Angine de Poitrine ultimately sound only like themselves.

Across six tracks including "Sherpa," "Tamebsz," "Sahardnieh," and "L'Aberek," Vol. I conjures hypnotic sonic vortices of driving drum grooves and intricately layered microtonal guitar that make the most sophisticated and joyful case for how wide open rock music can still be. Originally released in Canada in 2024, it sold through five pressings in days. This is your chance to own one of the most sought-after and genuinely thrilling debut albums in recent memory.