Angine de Poitrine: The Viral Duo Redefining Music with Microtones

They appear in the video in costumes covered in small dots.

Both wear masks with the build quality of a school stage production, an afternoon's work with lots of papier-mache, acrylic paint and a hot glue gun.

The video begins with the pair standing side by side, gesturing solemnly towards sparkly golden pyramids on their costumes, which also feature ridiculously long noses.

They speak, or rather, chant in an extended robotic drone the band name: Angine de Poitrine, which translates roughly into English as "chest pain".

All this is before they have even played a note.

In the YouTube world of 'reaction videos' — people videoing themselves as they take in new music — the sight and sounds of Angine de Poitrine at their KEXP live set have caused quite a commotion.

Most seem bemused, many ready to write it all off as a cheap gimmick, others are intrigued as the band take up their positions and start playing.

What happens next is what has made this video attract 14.5 million views since its premiere in February and propel the duo from Saguenay, in Québec, to be the "most viral act" on Spotify, according to Rolling Stone Canada.

Khn de Poitrine, the guitarist/bassist and drummer, Klek, start Sarniezz, a four-and-a-half-minute trip which features repeating loops of guitar and bass, with the drums somehow bringing order to the unorthodox time signatures.

At this point, most of the YouTube music reaction community is in for the ride, bopping along to the undisputed skill on show. Then it becomes clear — this music has a strangeness to it, an alien quality.

Microtones.

While Western ears are usually accustomed to intervals of the 12-tone scale, microtones are the notes that occur if you break up those intervals into even smaller increments.

To achieve this on guitar and bass, the necks are modified, with more frets added.

Angine de Poitrine are, as many have pointed out, certainly not the first to play with microtones.

Aussie band King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard went deep into microtonal rock on their 2017 album Flying Microtonal Banana. Non-Western music has employed microtones for centuries.

A closer look at the spotted instrument used by Khn de Poitrine shows more than usual frets on both the guitar and bass.

This, combined with Khn's cascading loops of notes layering one on top of the other, results in a feast of riffing driven by Klek's powerhouse drumming, all while his floppy nose is bouncing around.

As the first track continues, the YouTubers writhe in disbelief, faces contorting as they try to make sense of it.

"What is happening?", "How are they doing that?" and stunned silence are among the reactions, which give way to head bopping as the song shifts gear into double time.

A consensus among most of the reaction community, be they 'jazz musician', 'guitar teacher', 'classical pianist' or 'Beatles fan', is that Angine de Poitrine is like nothing they have seen or heard before.

And with AI-created music gaining even more of a foothold in popular culture, many are saying the novelty of Angine de Poitrine may just be something too far-fetched for artificial intelligence to conjure.

'Like hearing an alien make a beautiful mistake'

Tom Howard is a Tasmanian professional musician who, as TomShreds, has built a substantial online following for his guitar skills and teaching.

He said he was "blown away when I first heard Angine de Poitrine", noting the level of difficulty being achieved on an instrument which would be "very confusing for any long-time player".

Howard said he was impressed by how Khn de Poitrine manages to record "funky parts and have them loop perfectly in time with the drums, allowing them to add parts over the top".

"It makes for a big sound for only a duo," he said.

"It just hit me how quirky and strange, yet funky and ingenious the music was … like hearing an alien make a beautiful mistake that should sound wrong, but actually works perfectly in its own universe."

As for their popularity, Howard said that it was "a credit to how cleverly they launched their sound and image".

Angine de Poitrine's most virally popular track, Fabienk, showcases the duo's ability to weave exotic melodies and jarring rhythms which eventually give way to a more straight-ahead groove, only for that to grind to a halt — before restarting with an insanely catchy bassline and stomping beat.

Along the way, Khn and Klek occasionally sing in their robotic voices and do little dances while chanting SEBASTIEN, which has been speculated is a tribute to their manager, Sébastien Collin.

'Never seen a KEXP session get shared this widely'

Morgan Chosnyk, programming group director for KEXP, the video channel that hosted the band's viral live performance, said she decided to get the duo after seeing a video.

"When the performance started with the two members doing their signature triangle hand gestures and alien-like voices, then completely blowing our minds when they started playing the first song, I knew this was something really amazing."

Chosnyk told the ABC that watching the session blow up, "has been incredible".

"We've never seen a KEXP session get shared this widely, having memes and reaction videos made, all the fan art, and news pieces written about it.

Staying anonymous as fame grows

Angine de Poitrine said it is an "anonymous art project" and that "any speculation regarding the identity of its members is unverified, not endorsed by the group, and could constitute an invasion of privacy".

"At first, the idea for the costumes was to play more shows and play a bit of an Andy Kaufman-esque joke on the crowd and say, 'Hey, can we start a band without anybody knowing who we are?' And who is it behind the masks?" Klek told Montreal's Cult MTL.

"There's a comfort to feeling, 'Oh, I'm this on stage,' but after that, I'm a normal person," he said.

Of course, the internet being what it is means people are digging around and posting links to videos of the duo's earlier, unmasked works.

For the most part, it seems fans don't want to know who they are and prefer to play along with the self-described "space-time voyagers" and their schtick.

This writer is not about to break the spell — and is happy to let the quirky Québécois duo and their fanbase enjoy it while it lasts.