10 thoughts whilst getting my mind blown watching Angine de Poitrine at Psych Fest
1. More psych than psych
Even Manchester Psych Fest has never seen anything quite like this — and that’s saying something.
The hugely successful one-day festival is a thrilling, spiralling beast that seems to take over every venue in the city centre and fill them with wild and exciting music. It may have come a long way since those early events at Manchester’s Night & Day Café and, like some high-decibel octopus, now wraps itself around the city for one day with some of the best frontline music out there. (Stay tuned for our own Louder Than War Fest in March 2027)
But the polka-dotted aliens from outer space — or Saguenay in Quebec, Canada — have not only pushed the envelope, they’ve signed, sealed and delivered it to destinations unknown.
Like all great electric-shock moments in culture, they freeze-frame the moment and boggle the mind.
Even the name fits.
Angine de Poitrine translates as severe chest pain caused by a lack of blood and oxygen flow to the heart muscle.
After watching them play, that feels strangely apt.
We already have a review of this amazing spectacle elsewhere on the site, so I’m here to ponder on the magnificent beast that is Angine de Poitrine.
2. Brain salad surgery
Now, just because I’m personally one-quarter French Canadian does not give me any particular bias or insight into this astonishing band, who are also from that vast chunk of frankly Francophone Canada and seem destined to become one of the biggest groups in the world by gloriously swimming upstream against every trend and notion of where pop culture is meant to be going.
Here at LTW, we always back a salmon swimming upstream and revel in the unexpected, and this duo give us plenty of wild ammunition in a gobsmacking display that leaves you with a grin on your face, your feet twitching to the off-kilter rhythms and your brain tied up in knots.
3. Apollo mission
As they take an absolutely rammed Manchester Apollo on a trip, it hits me that this must have been what it felt like seeing Jimi Hendrix in 1967: everyone comfortable in the idea that they were already living in the best of sonic times and that there was nowhere left for that ancient guitar noise to go.
Then — wham, bam — someone tears up the rule book and saunters off in the opposite direction.
4. A spider’s web of glorious microtonal melody
The microtonal thing has been done before, of course, but never quite like this.
The crystalline tumble of notes is pure psychedelia but also stunningly melodic. It’s like a spider’s web of sound doing something wonderfully lysergic to your mind.
5. There’s an octopus on the drums
And then there’s the drumming.
The drumming is off the scale. It would be too easy to get lost in the guitar gymnastics, but the drums are every bit their equal. The pair face each other onstage, locked into some eternal cosmic groove, counterpointing and propelling each other ever higher into deep space.
At times it sounds like there’s an octopus behind the kit.
6. Prog rock you can dance to
There is virtuosity and complexity in both of their playing, but they never forget the groove.
There’s a mosh pit down the front as well and an army of nodding heads that goes further back. For all the technical brilliance, this is physical music.
It moves.
7. Dotting the eyes! Polka dots are pop art
Much has been said about the image, but like all great pop, Angine de Poitrine understand that a uniform look matters.
It creates mystery, mythology and a certain level of madness.
The polka masked faces, the black dots, the strange dotted carnivorous buttockfly insectoid long proboscis and the strange visual language — it’s instantly memorable and perfectly in tune with the music.
8. Underground, overground and now wombling free…
Surely when they started this caper, neither of them could have imagined it escaping the local scene in their hometown.
You could easily imagine this music being the preserve of a small clutch of lunatic diehards and prog curmudgeons nodding their heads in half-empty bars.
Instead, here they are, filling a huge venue and that in itself feels like some kind of victory.
9. Nimble toes
There is something genuinely mesmerising about watching guitarist Khn de Poitrine‘s feet painted white with black polka dots on them shuffling across the pedals while his battery of loopers layer up the sound and the bass and guitar lines spiral around each other.
Fuck knows how he remembers the order.
Fuck knows how he doesn’t get the sequence wrong.
It’s a stunning level of skill, but even that never distracts from the basic fact that the music is fun, wild and a total groove.
10. Space is the place
They might be pretending to be aliens onstage.
Although we are not entirely sure they’re pretending.
They make alien noises, fiddle with mysterious dials and we all happily play along, but like all great rock ’n’ roll they could quite easily have arrived from somewhere in deep space.
And deep space is where all great rock ’n’ roll suddenly appears from.
They are the genuine black holes.
Polka dots torn into the space time continuum.
~
All words by John Robb.
Photos supplied.
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