“Dada pythago mantra rok-n-rol.”
“Those triangle motherfuckers”, I uttered once more. After their KEXP reel picked me for the fifth time, it was finally time to unmute and find out what the fuck was going on. In 2026, it’s utterly rare not to be baited, as most videos are ones to regret clicking on. Not so with Angine de Poitrine’s performance of “Mata Zyklek”, which turned out to be a tractor beam into dotty heaven. The rest of the story is history as I joined the ranks of those newly acquainted with the band, romping through their discography quickly, but not fast enough to help sell out their pre-orders and tours. Their coming heralds a huge moment for microtonal, looper, and math music, and Vol. II will rightly be a defining release of this kind.
It’s immediately important to stress that Angine de Poitrine are not simply a flash-in-the-feed, they are fascinating from the ground up. Their look is undeniably refreshing, going the opposite direction to your typical ‘masked band’, dressing as the modern art installation a STEM degree holder warned you about. Aesthetics aside, it’s the music that is truly magnetic, otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this here. Guitarist and pedal extraordinaire Khn de Poitrine makes a world of shapes exclusively from the wrong notes and layers that come and go. Drummer Klek de Poitrine simply keeps up, turning a tiny kit into an absolute workhorse. The looping is not at all withheld from the viewer, making it actively fun to unpick where the lines begin and end. Looping also keeps the music in even-meter ‘4/4’ land, so as it all gets dizzying, you are never wrong to bop your head back to it. They fill a Clown Core-sized gap in the market for idiosyncratic two pieces, and this time, you won’t lose aux privileges for putting them on.
As hordes of music nerds are now finding, Vol. I presented the band fully formed to the world. Vol. II makes what was subtle in Vol. I into a burning sword, as tracks move with serious direction. You can no longer mistake this for a simple jam band, as normal riffs have gone out the window and the tracks feel thoroughly composed, overflowing with earworms. Opener “Fabinek” lurches in like a drunken pointillist, with its jagged patterns steadily making more sense until the true groove arrives. There’s always a delirious and unwell feeling to the melodies, far beyond what you would expect from microtonality. Khn isn’t bringing those extra frets into the rock and roll world, they’re taking us into their own. As seen on KEXP, the silly wiggle both musicians hit during “Fabienk” as the bass takes over is fated to be Angine de Poitrine’s Fortnite dance. The shimmying will continue as the groove deepens further, folding in Steve Howe-esque noodles.
The also-already famous “Mata Zylkek” follows with a determined tempo. That ‘banger’ anti-riff finally lands at one minute forty, and each time you get there you will wonder how human art has converged to create such a cacophony. The looping is crafty, not simply building in flat layers that enter in the same order they left, as your typical loop workflow would go; often a stack gets removed while select parts remain in the races. The drums have to work around this wobbly yet quantised world and do so with flair. The last of the tracks that debuted on the live session follows, “Sarniezz”, also their shortest by a hair and narrowly my favourite of the trio, as it’s determined to switch out riffs at a fast pace.
Whatever metric the duo use to determine when to let loose with their squeaky vocals is beyond calculation, but it’s their speciality on these first three tracks. There are parallels to the gang vocals often found throughout instrumental math rock, enjoyed by the likes of And So I Watch You From Afar. Yet these provide the opposite energy; a sort of soft mewling to shake off any residual coolness they might have attracted (which, in turn, is cool as hell).
What will be truly new for audiences is the record’s second side: “UTZP”, “Yor Zarad” and “Angor”, and it’s easy to imagine that any of these could be favourites too. “UTZP” takes the silly to the stratosphere with some sort of polka rhythm. It’s the perfect soundtrack to wax your moustache to before starting your next bank robbery. The polka converges upon a crazy guitar solo where the looped patterns swarm like angry bees. After the obligatory Angine de Poitrine mid-track break, the duo get ‘serious’ and enter Hawkwind mode with a driven rhythm and yet more solos. “Yor Zarad” is the deep end of Angine de Poitrine, a sort of litmus test for microtonality (but not so long that it might be an endurance test too). After a stop-start introduction, the closer “Angor” builds up relatively slowly, adding comparatively few layers and letting the increasing business of the drums signal the end times.
Vol. II’s singles are demonstrably a roaring success already, and the full record adds a victory lap. By being both oddball and immediately fun, they escape from the “math rock” trap of chin stroking, better-than-thou posturing that the genre is perceived to have. They are bringing microtonality, looping, and papier-mâché to new audiences, much to the displeasure of some snooty adherents (dig deep enough in certain comment sections, and you’ll find them). They’re not the first, and they won’t be the last, but Angine de Poitrine brings the whole package, and it’s no mistake that Vol. II has generated their most viral moments – so far.
A lingering question is, what’s next? There will surely be a good few years of success on the heels of Vol. II as every fest from ArcTanGent to Coachella will be wrangling for a piece of the band. But musically, we didn’t get to such heights by stagnating – how will Angine de Poitrine evolve? No doubts there will be micro adjustments to the gear and outfits, but the real change would be a move away from their fundamental promise of being an entirely “in studio” band. They wouldn’t lose anything if they don’t stray too far this format, for example, with greater variety in their song lengths and intents, or by offering something more conceptual or atmospheric. This sort of elevation would truly seal them as the defining microtonal-math band of all time. Regardless, if the surging interest in Angine de Poitrine is anything to go by, audiences have the appetite for many, many more volumes of their irreverent anti-rock.
8.5/10
Vol. II releases independently on the 3rd April, and pre-orders are sold out at the time of writing.