If you know me at all, you know I'm a huge music lover. I listen a lot, broadly, and with a soft spot for things that are just a little different. And sometimes you stumble upon something that stops you in your tracks.
You have to do something genuinely original to stand out. Not a slogan, just a fact. And there's a band that proves this better than anyone right now.
Angine de Poitrine. A microtonal math rock duo from Quebec. I can't make the description any shorter, and honestly, it doesn't do them justice either. Because what these two do doesn't fit in any box.
What's going on here?
After their performance on KEXP, this act has been catapulted into the world at an unstoppable pace. Six million views in a month, a not insignificant portion of which are mine. Their new album drops next week, all their shows are sold out, and I'm making desperate attempts to get my hands on a ticket somewhere.
YouTube is now full of reaction videos. Droves of old white guys trying to analyse the act from a music theory perspective. Hipsters already expanding their vinyl collections. Connoisseurs who recognise the genre, including the microtonality, from bands like King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. Everyone is into it. Everyone.
Why this works
What Angine de Poitrine does is, on paper, completely absurd. The band name is French Canadian and utterly unpronounceable for Americans, which leaves them looking a bit foolish. They speak exclusively in distorted voices in a kind of fake alien language, which only adds to the mystery. They wear polka dot suits, are unrecognisable, and play a custom-built microtonal combination of guitar and bass in a single instrument.
And yet it works. More than that: it works irresistibly well. And that's because they do several things extremely well at the same time.
It's super original, but it's easy on the ear. It's technically interesting, but never in a way that shuts you out. It looks incredible, from the outfits to the instruments to the performance. And it's handmade. They probably have a click track running, but the drumming and guitar playing are real. You can hear the rock 'n' roll dripping off it. Craftsmanship. Artistry.
If I had to sum it up: it's like the unlikely love child of Louis Cole and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. And if you know those two, you know that's a compliment of the highest order.
What you can learn from this
And here's my point. This cannot be done with AI.
I wrote about it in my previous blog post: AI predicts based on millions of examples. The result is a clever average. Quite impressive in terms of speed and consistency, but rarely truly surprising. AI can seem creative, but in essence it never is. It lacks feeling, context, and intuition.
Angine de Poitrine is living proof. No algorithm in the world would have figured out that a microtonal math rock duo from Quebec, disguised as extraterrestrial beings, communicating in an incomprehensible language, and playing a self-built hybrid instrument, would move millions of people. That's not pattern recognition. That's not a clever average. That's pure, human originality. The kind that comes from pushing boundaries, breaking rules, and making connections nobody expects.
To stand out, you need to do something unpredictable. And predictability is exactly what AI is made of. By all means, use AI for what it's good at: structuring, accelerating, taking repetitive work off your hands. But for that creative spark that makes the difference? You need people for that.
Go check them out
But enough philosophising. Go listen to this band. Give it three minutes. I guarantee you a remarkable experience.