Saguenay, QC · math rock · experimental · prog-rock

Angine de Poitrine

3 upcoming festivals

Masked Saguenay duo who loop double-necked microtonal guitar into hypnotic, odd-metred math rock — 2026's strangest breakout story.

Angine de Poitrine — the French term for angina — are a two-piece from Saguenay, Quebec, formed in 2019 as a gag after the pair were booked to play the same local venue twice in one week and decided the second show should be by somebody else. The disguise stuck. They still perform anonymously as Khn de Poitrine (microtonal guitars and bass, loop station) and Klek de Poitrine (drums), in oversized papier-mâché masks and head-to-toe black-and-white polka dots, and describe the result as a "mantra-rock Dada Pythago-Cubist orchestra."

The music is built on a double-necked guitar tuned to microtonal intervals, so the loops Khn stacks live sit slightly beside the notes a standard guitar can reach — the friction is what gives the band its sour, hypnotic edge — while Klek plays against them in odd metres. Two volumes, Vol. 1 (2024) and Vol. II (2026), document it; the second was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize, and the band took GAMIQ's artist of the year in late 2025. A KEXP session filmed at Trans Musicales in Rennes and posted in early 2026 spread far past their usual audience and turned a Quebec club act into a festival booking on three continents inside a year.