‘Welcome to the world of weird, freaky music’: Quebec duo Angine de Poitrine to play for sold-out crowd tonight

In the middle of a cross-country tour, Quebec duo Angine de Poitrine has sold out one of its two Edmonton shows this week – an unsurprising feat to someone who has been watching the band’s rise in popularity.

The music of Angine de Poitrine – an “angular” production of microtonal guitars, drums and a looping machine – often gets dubbed math rock, explained Patrick Nickleson, an assistant professor of musicology at the University of Alberta and the director of the school’s Sounds Studies Institute.

“It’s nothing like what tends to get popular or go viral most often in pop music, but I’ve heard or read people online saying it has to do with a real hunger for real complex human sound and art right now, among all the fake music, AI music, over-marketed music,” Nickleson told CTV News Edmonton on Wednesday, ahead of the band’s first evening concert in the Ice District’s Fan Park.

“There also is something that’s super catchy and rhythmic and groovy and theatrical and freaky to them, so I can see what draws people in.”

Angine de Poitrine is riding the momentum of their sophomore album Vol. II earning consideration for this year’s Polaris Music Prize, as well as a record-sized audience at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

The duo is as identifiable by their look as their sound. Both members, whose personal identities have been speculated on but not confirmed, dress head to toe in polka-dotted black or white. Their faces are hidden by matching papier-mâché masks.

But as fresh as their sound may seem, Nickleson called it reminiscent of bands like Don Caballero, Slint and B.C.’s Nomeansno, or the work of Quebecois composer René Lussier.

“It’s experimental, but it also grooves and rocks pretty hard, so I hope people use it as a chance to dig into some more of the weird music in the world,” Nickleson said.

“To me, the most exciting thing is that maybe a lot of young people or older people, too, are discovering that music can be quite surprising and weird, and a place to have new thoughts and hear new sounds and realize new things, and to be challenged by what we already think we know.”

He added, “Welcome to the world of weird, freaky music, Swifties.”

As of Tuesday afternoon, tickets were still available to Angine de Poitrine’s second Edmonton show on Wednesday.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Galen McDougall