The only place in Canada this band could have come from is Quebec. The name means "angina of the chest". Rick Beato, to stop people emailing him, just did a video on them. Yep, this is the music of the future all right. They call this "math rock" and if we had such a thing as a mathematically-trained rock musicologist, I'm sure she could spend many happy hours figuring out just what they hell they are up to. In the meantime, I find I can listen to anything presented with sincerity and conviction, as this is.
I mean, of course it's via KEXP. :)
ReplyDeleteit's a little hard to resist the comment that we're hearing RUSH 2.0 from Quebec in fifth generation Frippertronics musical scene. But this stuff is definitely more interesting than the tedium of the four-chord soul-bro ballads I'm stuck hearing on mainstream radio lately.
ReplyDeleteHarry Partch we've failed you. But you did compose Sonata Dementia so maybe you knew the future.
ReplyDeleteI've really been enjoying not only Angine de Poitrine, but especially watching people react to them. It was fun watching a bass player realize that he couldn't play any of their licks because his bass didn't have the right frets. Or there was the guy who broke out into hysterical laughter as soon as he saw their costumes. Then, when the music started his jaw dropped and he just sat there wide-eyed for about five minutes. "What genre is this" he finally cried in despair. You don't often get to see someone's brain get rewired in real time. One guy, an expert in microtones, pointed out that the instruments are fretted in quarter-tones and even transcribed a couple of tunes. Good work! He pointed out that the reason this music is much more listenable than most quarter-tone music is that they use a lot of stepwise motion which our ear can accept more easily than disjunct motion. Also, the harmonies tend to be thirds and sixths, even though they are moving in quarter-tones. He didn't mention how the rhythmic energy contributes.
ReplyDeleteAngine de Poitrine are from Saguenay which used to be Chicoutimi. I know the area because I used to work with a flute player from there. It is no surprise to me that if you lived there you might spend a lot of time coming up with some really exotic music. There's not much else to do!
The costumes have some interesting consequences: for one thing, you can't tell the age, sex, or race of the creatures inside and even species is a guess. 🤪 So there is no way that any DEI regimes could be applied to this group.
I hear a few influences: Harry Partch, Bartók (those glisses), Frank Zappa and Taraf de Haïdouks (those wild gypsy melodies).
PRobably just my own listening but I heard sounds more like Ivan Wyschnegradsky and Alois Haba for some reason but since I'm fine with a few quarter-tone composers I've got no real complaints about quarter-tonal prog rock. :)
ReplyDeleteI could joke, though, that they dress like villains from the manga Dan da Dan. :)
Their costumes seem more to me an echo of the Italian comedian del Arte:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/hhWhGOmfT7euFy032bEzH-PtWm0=/1462x1080/filters:fill(auto,1)/1462px-Scene_della_commedia_dellarte222-fca83f8866134ba48f726d4a9d6dce2f.jpg
surf rock with a micro tonal twist
ReplyDeletehah, yes!
ReplyDelete