You’ve almost certainly heard of Angine de Poitrine by now. Though they’ve been around for years, the anonymous duo exploded in popularity following the release of Vol. II, an experimental, math rock album that arrived in April.
Completely instrumental, the songs on this project are dizzyingly intricate, each made up of shifting tempos and labyrinthine guitar riffs, and yet they burrow into your subconscious with the same intensity as a top 40 pop song.
After years of grinding in relative obscurity, Angine de Poitrine is now a global act. In recent months, they’ve opened for Jack White, performed on The Tonight Show, and, on Sept. 22, they took home the prestigious Polaris Music Prize for best Canadian album of the year. They also won the SOCAN Polaris Song Prize for their song “Fabienk.”
Unfortunately, guitarist and bassist Khn de Poitrine and drummer Klek de Poitrine weren’t available for an interview, not only because they are on tour, but also because they are 333-year-old aliens who don’t speak any human languages. (Their real names aren’t public, but people have their suspicions.)
Instead, The Grind chatted with Sébastien Collin, who has been Angine de Poitrine’s manager since 2024.
Here’s our conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity.
As the band’s manager, how does it feel to be recognized by the Polaris?
From a Quebec perspective, Polaris is pretty cool [laughs]. It’s a nice bit of attention, especially knowing that the jury is made up of journalist people who are music-oriented. It’s not about numbers, it’s about the music.
I guess that’s especially the case for a band like Angine de Poitrine, which has had such viral success. That kind of thing can be a curse for some groups, right?
Exactly, we know that people have listened to the music, and liked it enough to put us on the shortlist.
A lot of people struggle to categorize Angine de Poitrine. How would you describe Vol. II?
I would say it’s a kind of rock with complex tempos and overdubbed guitars. You know, there are some bands that make complex music, but they don’t know how to make it fun. That music can be hard to listen to unless you have a lot of musical experience. With Angine de Poitrine, they’ve found an in-between, where they can make complex music that is still catchy.
The band also writes microtonal compositions — a style of music that uses 24 notes within each octave, rather than the typical 12, introducing extra half-step notes to the scale. In other words, the guitar played by Khn has twice as many frets as a normal guitar.
Yeah, I’m not even sure someone who isn’t musically-oriented would even notice this, because the music doesn’t have a lot of dissonance. They aren’t pushing you to hear the microtones, they just integrate it into the music, kind of like when a guitarist adds a “blue note” to their solo. [ A blue note is slightly lower in pitch compared to a standard scale, adding tension to the music.] But Angine de Poitrine are doing that with, like, all their notes [laughs].
It’s definitely a unique sound, but at the same time it feels very much a part of the Quebec music scene, which in recent years has produced a lot of proggy and experimental rock music. You don’t necessarily see that coming out of Ontario, for example.
I say this often, but for me, each time a band comes out of Quebec, they motivate and influence the next band and help them get better. And that’s been happening for 10 or 15 years in Quebec now, there’s like a new layer of new bands each year and it’s getting really good. For me, it wouldn’t have been possible to have Angine de Poitrine if there wasn’t Gros Mené and Deux Pouilles en Cavale. It’s a scene that’s just been evolving, and everyone is just being very selective on their playing, and push-push-pushing. Angine de Poitrine is not possible if they were not part of the scene here.
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Angine de Poitrine has been making this kind of music for a few years now, but it wasn’t until this album came out that they exploded in popularity. You know, they were this sort of obscure instrumental band that few people outside of Quebec had heard of, and now their songs are being used as Blue Jays bumper music on Sportsnet. Why is this happening now?
I think everyone is excited, and proud to be fans of this sort of outsider project, with a strong visual identity, music that’s complex but fun. I think people were finally ready for something like this, and then suddenly it became cool [laughs], and it’s just everywhere.
Sure, but there have been a lot of strange, prog or math rock groups over the years, whether that’s Primus or Battles, and they aren’t exactly known as “cool” bands.” My friend and music critic Emilie Hanskamp argues that part of their success stems from the fact that in an era of unregulated AI-generated slop, people are increasingly gravitating towards weirdness and quirkiness — qualities that are inherently human.
Yeah, there’s something really authentic about what they are doing. And you may have seen online that there’s a real community developing among fans of Angine de Poitrine.
It’s really quite remarkable. I searched the band on Google this morning, and when you hit “search,” a bunch of black polka dots appear on the browser, like this is crazy. How are you all feeling about this type of virality and sudden success?
It feels like a parallel universe where a local band just becomes really popular [laughs], and at the same time the band is really grounded. They just do their shows, and because they are anonymous, when they go out, they are just normal guys — or women? So it’s just this in-between state of becoming really popular but having a normal life.
When I saw them open for Jack White, there were so many people in the audience decked out in polka dots.
It’s great because we see people in the audience who are not used to going to live shows, and they just go right to the front. At the end of the show there’s usually a small moshpit, and you can see people are surprised, like ‘why is this happening?’ And I’m like, dude, you went to the exact place where a mosh pit breaks out. But people are just passionate about this, even if they don’t know what they’re getting into.
That show was at RBC Amphitheatre in Toronto, and had an attendance of about 16,000. That’s a big difference from the club shows they were doing at the start of this year. How do you scale up?
I mean, let’s talk about Jazz Fest in Montreal. [In June, the free show drew between 70,000 and 100,000 fans, the largest audience at an event since Stevie Wonder performed in 2009]. Our team is growing on the production side — we have a great light guy, a great sound guy. But for the band they just have a pedal board and drums, and they’re just playing rock and roll in the end. And we’re lucky because our set up works for any size venue.
It’s not unlike the White Stripes, speaking of Jack White. Two people making noise.
Yeah, it’s rock and roll [laughs].
What’s your favorite track on Vol. II.
“Utzep,” partly because they don’t play live very often, and so I just need to hear it more. But also that song has two parts to it, and when the second part starts, it’s just … [head exploding gesture].
Richie Assaly is one of the 200+ music experts who make up the Polaris Prize Jury.
This article appeared in the 2026 Oct/Nov issue.
