Here at Musical Brick, we’ve always had a soft spot for artists who hide behind a mask. Peter Gabriel spent the early Genesis years buried under fox heads, flower costumes, and a Slipperman. The costume was the art. It directed your attention away from the person and toward the idea. So when we first saw footage of two figures in polka-dot bodysuits and enormous papier-mâché noses (I’m reminded of Mr. Noseybonk the famously creepy character from the 1970s/80s British children’s puzzle show Jigsaw) playing a double neck guitar like Geddy Lee and Mike Rutherford used to play.. we felt immediately at home.
Meet Angine de Poitrine, a duo from Saguenay, Quebec, and quite possibly the most interesting band on the planet right now.
Who Are They?
Formed in 2019, Angine de Poitrine is an experimental math rock duo built around two anonymous figures: Khn de Poitrine (microtonal guitar/bass/loops) and Klek de Poitrine (drums). Their identities are deliberately hidden, think Daft Punk, but with longer noses. The name, for the record, is French for “angina pectoris” (chest pain). A band called Chest Pain, wearing giant noses, playing instruments built with a saw, describing themselves as a “Mantra-Rock Dada-Pythagorean Cubist Orchestra.” If that doesn’t sound like something from the Spanish Inquisition sketch’s cutting room floor, nothing does.
And yet, like Monty Python itself, the absurdity is the delivery vehicle for something genuinely serious underneath. Nobody expected them either.
The origin story of those spectacular masks is pure accidental genius. Early on, the band was barred from performing at the same venue in back-to-back weeks, so one week they played as themselves, and the next they showed up in disguise. The disguise worked. And then it never came off. The giant nose, the polka dots, the wrapped drums: what started as a workaround became the band’s entire visual identity. There’s now intense online speculation about who is behind the noses, which they actively refuse to confirm. The mystery is part of the art.
The Instrument That Changed Everything
The centrepiece of their sound is a homemade double-neck guitar/bass hybrid, modified with extra frets literally sawn in by hand. Those extra frets unlock microtonal tuning, pitches that fall between the notes of the standard Western scale. The result is music that sounds slightly, deliberately off. Not broken. Just bent.
“I added more frets on a guitar with a saw,” is how they explain it. Guitar World traced their influences to Turkish rock, Indian classical music, Gamelan, and the King Crimson Discipline era, which is, honestly, very prog of them. Genesis fans will recognise that same impulse: music that refuses to stay within comfortable boundaries. Mike Rutherford played a double-neck. Tony Banks layered synths into impossible architectures. Angine de Poitrine is doing something spiritually adjacent, taking a familiar instrument and rebuilding it from the inside out.
What They Actually Sound Like
Tight, looping grooves. Constant rhythmic shifts. Melodies that feel almost familiar before sliding sideways into something stranger. The drums, wrapped in fabric for both visual effect and to deliberately dampen the sound, sit in an unusual sonic space that complements rather than anchors the guitar. Critics have called it “asymmetrical and dissonant” but still danceable. Their own listening diet, apparently, includes Dua Lipa, ABBA, Daft Punk, Miles Davis, and John Scofield. The maths checks out.
The Viral Moment
Their debut album Vol. 1 arrived in June 2024, six tracks, no radio single, no obvious entry point. Underground buzz in Quebec grew slowly. Then in December 2025, they played their first-ever European show at the Trans Musicales festival in Rennes, France, and KEXP filmed it.
When that footage dropped on February 5, 2026, the internet lost its mind. The clip racked up more than 2.8 million views, spawning reaction videos, Twitter/X arguments about microtonality, and intense speculation about who is behind the noses. In December 2025, they won the GAMIQ Artist of the Year, Quebec’s top independent music prize, in the award’s 20th anniversary year. Their second album, Vol. II, drops April 3, 2026, and their first US shows are already sold out.
You know we can’t resist this: we want to make Angine de Poitrine LEGO minifigures. Images in this post are AI Generated. Concept only.
Where to Start
KEXP performance (February 2026) — start here, it’s the one that broke the internet
Vol. 1 (2024) — on Bandcamp and streaming platforms
anginedepoitrine.com — follow them before the algorithm catches up
One comment
I’d buy them