I guess by now everyone and their dog have literally heard the phenomenon called Angine de Poitrine -- a previously-obscure band from the underbelly of Quebec state, Canada, whose KEXP gig stirred quite the reaction in the musical mainstream. I don't know if the reader realizes this, but at this point I should say that they're now as pop as any manele act out there, which would be quite the paradox, given that their whole musical and overall artistic message is "hey, we're the band from another world, here to express something beyond human comprehension".
So I guess that if this article tried to answer a question, that would be: are Angine de Poitrine actually a pop act?
For the record, my first careful watch of the KEXP performance elicited the latter reaction, i.e. that well, as much as I'm trying, I can't really place this into a definite genre; which to my ear and mind is usually a sign of something interesting. I mean, I could definitely hear pieces of certain genres, be they indie rock, Turkish music, progressive rock, disco, or, why not, punk. And it wasn't the variety of pieced genres that got to me, but the way they were blended together, along with of course, the performance itself, which I'll admit was pretty fucking entertaining. But now, after hearing them a bunch of times, I'll have to say that I don't think this is by any means an unprecedented act in the history of music. And over here at The Tar Pit we're all about history, ain't we?
I will go out on a limb and remark that Angine de Poitrine have within them something that I think can be aptly called: "beatlesness". Let me explain.
When The Beatles came out, they rocked the world through a form of expression that was unheard of before, one that was approximated at the time as "rock and roll", but that was indeed much more than that. In less than a decade, they managed to invent quite a bunch of musical genres, among which: hard rock, progressive rock, psychedelic rock, and yes, believe it or not, pop. Their appearance on the stage got everyone crazed about how well they sounded and the popularity along with this compressed variety of genres are, I believe, what caused them to become the shoulders of everything that we'd label today as "pop", that is, music that appeals to the masses. In a sense, that is all that beatlesness is: the essence of pop music.
Now, I don't know whether Angine de Poitrine were specifically thought out by their authors to be a popular act, according to some occult recipe that only they knew. Maybe they did, maybe they didn't, and that's besides the point in my opinion. The point is that Angine de Poitrine are enjoyable music despite their being technically complex. And that is why they have beatlesness.
As far as their actual technical and artistic complexity goes, I can attempt a(n admittedly superficial) analysis: their harmonic structure is sometimes based on quartertones instead of semitones1; their rhythmic structure goes beyond the traditional 4/4 or 3/4 and it often involves metric changes during songs; their aesthetics are entirely coherent in their simplicity, exuding mainly contrast, but also a satirical take towards Freemason symbols -- and if I were to take this one step further, I would add that maybe the satire was meant to evoke the imminent disappearance of American dominance from the global stage. But anyway, the costumes are absolutely fucking funny; these dudes, who by the way, go by the name of Khn and Klek de Poitrine, are an absolute delight to watch if you ask me.
In lieu of a conclusion: yesterday I shared an Angine de Poitrine violin cover video with a friend, along with the comment that their online presence had gotten to the point where they were almost violating my attention. In response, she commented of her previous discussion with someone else on the possibility that Angine de Poitrine are an industry plant. I honestly don't know whether to believe this conspiracy theory or not; but one thing's for sure as far as I can tell: in a year or two from now, all the pop-industrial production studios will be doing the same kind of recipe, regurgitated as the new fresh thing on the market. So... enjoy, I guess?
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That is, they've divided the octave into twenty-four distinct sounds instead of the traditional Western twelve-tone scale. Big woop, the Persians and the Turks have been doing the same for centuries. I guess we could say that Western pop music-folks just hadn't discovered this part of the wheel to reinvent until Angine de Poitrine came along. ↩
P.S.: Check out this dramedy.