How Angine de Poitrine Challenges The Music Machine

By Douglas Groothuis, PhD

Author and environmental activist, Paul Klingsnorth, predicts in his best-selling book, Against the Machine, “that the next great division of the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and those who wish to live as machines.”[i] Which side are you on? Long before this, Francis Schaeffer (1912-84), warned that a secular-materialistic worldview reduces God’s image-bearers to a machine status, shorn of human personality, authenticity, and creativity.[ii] Before this, C. S. Lewis alerted of “the abolition of man,” brought about by a philosophy that denies objective moral values and the uniqueness of man who knows them and can live by them.[iii] On this worldview “man’s conquest of nature” would end up as man’s conquest of man as a unique and transcendence-needing creature, who would be conditioned by secular power-brokers, who invented their own values. The machine would eclipse and abolish the man.

The Duo and the Machine

How might that rather heady introduction about human nature pertain to two young French Canadian musicians, who are blowing up the internet without saying a word? Angine de Poitrine (hence AdP) is a musical duo whose name derives from the idiosyncratic art scene of Saguenay, Quebec. Perhaps tellingly, in French Angine de Poitrine means “chest pains.” They came out of nowhere, but now they are everywhere—all over the internet and touring the world with their nearly indescribable music and theatrical persona. They go by Khn (guitars) and Klec (drums), yet few know their real identities under the costumes.

Audience members regularly post videos on YouTube of their live performances from around the world. Response videos combine amazement with admiration, despite a few haters. Just a few months ago, no one had heard of them. Without the internet, their meteoric success would have been unlikely, but a video of a short live performance went viral a few months ago on KEXP. Their first musical release, the inauspiciously entitled, “Angine de Poitrine, Volume 1,” was released to little fanfare in 2024. But their second release, “Volume 2,” released on April 9, 2026, sold out immediately.

To describe the music and performance of Angine de Poitrine is challenging given their eccentricities. They do not fit easily into any genre. That is much of their charm. First to the music.

Khn plays a double-necked microtonal guitar. The top guitar has six strings. The bottom is a bass guitar with four strings. Yet both guitars have twice as many frets as usual. This gives allows for microtones (or half tones). There are, thus, twice as many notes to play, adding variety to the sound of individual notes and chords. AdP is not the first group to play microtonally, but they are the first to take the world by storm. The reason the group works as a duo is that Khn skillfully uses loops, both on six string and bass. Klec plays a small drum set with one bass drum, one mounted tom-tom and one floor tom-tom along with one ride and two crash cymbals. So much for the equipment, but what about the sound?

AdP has been called math rock, given the complexity of the time signatures and the microtonal phrasing and chords. However, the term mantra has also been applied to their music, given the repetition of their basic song structures. Yet they avoid monotony by building intensity and tension. Religious mantas cause the mind to shut down, but not so for AdP’s music, which keeps you alert and engaged.

AdP is a rock duo, but play with a sense of funk and jazz and use some near Eastern sensibilities. Since they stay in alien character and they speak no intelligible vocals except in “Sebastian” in which “Sebastian” is repeated several times over a bass line while the players make gestures. However, this is not simple rock, given the odd time signatures, microtones, and atypical chord progressions. “Ababa Hotel” is their jazziest piece. “Utzp” sounds like an Irish jig. Some pieces become almost heavy metal, such as the end of “Sherpa.” Although the music is odd, it is catchy and infectious, which is why so many at their concerts dance, clap (not always on the odd beats) and even sing along to the melodies (which have no words). I’ve seen some crowds moshing, but in a gentle and laughing way.

AdP’s music would be fascinating and appealing without their outrageous costumes and alien persona, but they would likely not be a sensation. Khn wears a large cone-shaped paper mache head piece, a long floppy nose, and lengthy yellow yarn-like hair, which he often flips out of his way. His eye holes are covered by dollar signs and he wears a polka dotted onesie pajama. His feet are bare and painted white with black polka dots. His hands are painted the same. The best videos of AdP shows Khn’s feet, since he performs a sophisticated ballet over the various pedals that create loops and alter sounds. He adjusts nobs with his toes! None of the live music is uses pre-recorded sounds. It is all produced by layers of loops activated by his feet. To coordinate all of this requires great skill with no margin of error. I have never seen anything like it. Their novelty is executed with virtuosity.

Klec uses no special effects. It must be difficult to play drums dressed in a robe and with a huge headpiece extending above his thin eye slot. Unlike Khn’s outfit, Klec’s costume allows us to see his eyes and a bit of his black-painted face. (His blackface hasn’t gotten them cancelled, probably because he is from another planet.) He gets the most out of a small set and stays in the grove even with the strangest time signatures. His fills are tasteful but minimal, given the precision of the music. The tunes start and end on dime, and makes sudden changes, making sloppiness impossible. Although the structure of their tunes is tight, they do improvise a bit.

But why has AdP gone viral? They reached #1 on the Spotify playlist a few weeks ago. Given that Spotify is the epitome of automatic and AI-generated music,[iv] this is more evidence that God exists and is just. Those who say that AdP is the ultimate anti-AI band are correct. The duo’s popularity is part of backlash against the onslaught of AI slop, since AI could never have come up with them. They are not products of the music business machine, nor is their music prefabricated, perfunctory or dull.

Theology to the Rescue

The AdP phenomenon has theological significance. God is in it, although a bit incognito. The machine, while made by humans, cannot replace men and women, who are made in God’s image. Machines are not conscious; they have no agency; and they cannot create anything—although they can produce or manufacture text and music parasitically. No human experience or innovation contributes to AI-generated music, which scans and synthesizes existing material through algorithms. Human beings are required for genuine creativity. But why should be believe that are we personal beings and not machines?

A personal and infinite God is the ultimate and original Creator, bringing everything into being out of nothing and then creating the basic kinds of life, culminating in human beings (Genesis 1-2). Only after that does the Creator pronounce his work “very good.” We are here to honor God, to love one another, and to have dominion over creation as culture-creators and culture-caretakers. Thus we are sub-creators under God and part of that creativity involves music and all the arts. Birds have beautiful birdcalls, but they do not compose music nor do their birdsongs vary over time. But humans create music of all kinds—from opera to jazz to folk—through their minds and instruments.

Once in a while and often unexpectedly, something new breaks out in music, such as jazz in America in the early twentieth century and rock in the middle of the 1950s. Genres merge and fuse, such as jazz-rock fusion in the early 1970s led by Miles Davis’s “Bitch’s Brew” (1970) and perfected by The Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever in the early 1970s.[v] But what of AdP, which formed in 2019?

They are very human while pretending to be aliens and using electronic devices in real time. Although you see little of their faces, they manage to communicate with each other and the audience through their gestures. Their signature gesture is the pyramid sign made with their hands. They begin each show by making the sign to each other while loudly saying their name through a distortion devise while their headpieces flash lights. They then turn to the audience and the audiences return the sign. Some in the audience dress in polka dots. Mimesis cannot be avoided in life.

AdP gives a happy ritual for a ritual-starved culture.[vi] However, beyond mutual appreciation and fun, we don’t know what it means. But somehow it is fun and charming. (The ideal place for meaningful ritual is a biblical and liturgical church.) Comments that I have been following on YouTube for several months are full of amazement and gratitude, evincing almost a spiritual awe. Their appeal seems to cover the age spectrum, with many older folks (such as myself) excited about a new sound and scene.

Despite these costumes, the persona of AdP is neither dark nor angry, unlike the low-IQ rock of Kiss years ago. I dare say AdP’s costumes, ritual, and gestures are cute, even endearing. These lads are obviously enjoying themselves on stage, even if we cannot see much of their faces. And we share in their happiness. Khn is moving constantly, walking back and forth and dancing over the pedals on his board, his entire body expressing the music. But there is another element of AdP’s success.

The nonpareil outfits, the strange voices and gestures, and the electronically-driven but deeply human music bespeaks of transcendence, an otherness that does not alienate but invites us into the strangeness through music and mutual recognition. AdP offer a warm and inviting spectacle of non-AI, unpredictable, and human-created art. It reminds us of our humanity and need for creativity and love. There is more to life and to music than what the machine can offer. God is in every gift of good art and “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Timothy 6:17; James 1:17).[vii]

[i] Paul Kingsnorth, Against the Machine: The Unmaking of Humanity (Thesis, 2025), 122. See also Neil Postman, Technopolis (Knopf, 1990).

[ii] Francis Schaeffer, Back to Freedom and Dignity (InterVarsity, 1972).

[iii] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (HarperOne, 2001).

[iv] See Liz Pelly, Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (Atria/One Signal Publishers, 2025).

[v] On jazz-rock fusion, see Douglas Groothuis, “Top Ten Jazz-Rock Fusion Recordings,” All About Jazz (April 27, 2021), https://www.allaboutjazz.com/top-jazz-rock-fusion-recordings.

[vi] See Byung-Chul Han, The Crisis of Narrative (Polity, 2022).

[vii] For more on art, see Francis Schaeffer, Art and the Bible (InterVarsity, 1972) and Douglas Groothuis, “True Beauty,” Truth Decay (InterVarsity, 2000).