“Calvin Harris is a name”: The major influences of Angine de Poitrine
Music and hope exist in tandem; they always have.
In times of sheer societal strife, it’s been music that has shed a glimmer of light onto a sea of darkness, and right now, in the 2020s, it feels like we’re treading in the water of an endless ocean of shit. But the light seems to burn brighter than it ever has right now, and one might argue that this is the best decade of music for a long time.
When I say one might argue, that one would be myself.
Ask anyone unlucky enough to be in my close circle of friends, and you’ll know that I’ve spent most of my weekends telling them that “music is back!” Because as the world hurtles closer to the apocalypse, the music has gotten better. We’ve sailed past the myriad of shit that made up the mainstream music of the 2010s and returned to a landscape where pop and alternative artists feel more aligned with one another.
It’s no longer obscurity pushing back against commercialism, but instead, the two are learning from one another to put credibility first. I mean, how else can you explain the rise of Angine de Poitrine? The microtonal obsessives from Quebec, Canada, have taken the music industry by storm and somehow thrust their obscure brand of experimental rock into the public consciousness.
It’s a popularity that simply wouldn’t have existed in the past decade. In fact, bands obsessed with polyrhythms were exiled to the dustiest corners of the record shop and labelled too difficult to understand for the layman, whereas in today’s landscape, there’s an expectation for the general public to be open-minded enough to understand that music is a diverse concept. And not even the symmetrically polka-dotted prosthetic outfits can put people off.
It’s a success story that reaffirms this wider idea that the 2020s have steered music back onto a more considered and artistic course. But while it feels as though Angine De Poitrine feel like they’ve come from the faraway future, designed to guide us to whatever destiny they’re futuristically privy to, there’s one dancefloor icon of the fabled 2010s who is bizarrely guiding them there.
“Calvin Harris is a name I had in mind,” said guitarist Khn when asked about their influences. He continued, the Scottish DJ and all of his feature artists as muses, saying, “And all the big hits by Rihanna, Dua Lipa, and all the big pop stars who’ve had tracks produced by Calvin Harris. They’re all killer bangers. I’m a huge Calvin Harris fan… and I don’t feel guilty about it.”
Maybe the glue that stitched together the hyper-electronic pop of the ‘10s and the furious indie resistance of the ‘20s was Angine De Poitrine after all? These unlikely heroes of modern music, dressed head to toe in outfits that aren’t entirely discernible, playing microtonal music that feels both rudimentary and hypnotising at the exact same time, have somehow bridged the gap between pop and rock.
Calvin Harris supposedly found love in a hopeless place, and maybe we’ve found music in an unlikely one?
