“It was the perfect choice to make fun of guitar heroes”: The story behind Angine de Poitrine’s ridiculous double-neck guitar
Between viral live sessions, a rapidly growing cult following, and even a recent co-sign from Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, Angine de Poitrine’s rise has been hard to ignore. But for a band that looks and sounds this intense, their core idea is surprisingly tongue-in-cheek.
In a recent chat with Cult MTL, guitarist Khn de Poitrine reveals that the project didn’t begin as some grand artistic statement, but as an inside joke that spiralled into something much bigger.
“This project is a culmination of a lot of years of inside jokes,” says Khn. “The names were our alter egos in a 10-minute free jazz project, where I was just fooling around on saxophone and (Klek) was on drums.”
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That playful, slightly absurd energy also shaped the band’s iconic masked personas, which were originally conceived as a kind of experiment in anonymity.
“At first, the idea for the costumes was to play more shows and play a bit of an Andy Kaufman-esque joke on the crowd and say, ‘Hey, can we start a band without anybody knowing who we are?’ And who is it behind the masks?” drummer Klek de Poitrine explains.
What started as a gag, however, has since become something more practical.
“There’s a comfort to feeling, ‘Oh, I’m this on stage,’ but after that, I’m a normal person,” Klek adds. “We can avoid the, ‘Oh, this is the drummer’ talks, where everyone swarms you after a show when I just want to drink my water.”
Musically, the duo’s sound is just as unconventional. Before releasing their debut single Sherpa in 2024, the band’s signature microtonal approach began with a DIY experiment.
“I took two guitars, and I took the frets from one board, which was kind of rusty and fucked up anyway, and I put them on a second fret board,” Klek recalls.
Early performances saw Khn juggling between a microtonal guitar and bass while looping parts live. But it didn’t take long before the pair began thinking bigger – and stranger.
“We thought it would look fucking sick, and for 15 seconds, we were like, ‘Oh, that’s a funny joke.’ But it became clear that it was a good idea,” Klek says of the now-signature double-neck build.
After fielding eye-watering quotes from luthiers – including one that came in at $12,000 per fretboard – the instrument was eventually built by a “professional friend” of Angine de Poitrine. And it quickly became central to the band’s identity.
“The whole idea of the band was to assume a bit of a satirical approach to rock music in general,” says Khn. “We wanted an exaggeration, so the double-neck guitar was the perfect choice to kind of make fun of guitar heroes.”
“We will have short musical statements in the songs that are actually just jokes, like, this is the boomer lick, and just shout (distortedly) ‘Hail Santana!’ into the microphone. Obviously, we love Santana. It’s a love statement, but also a caricature, because you’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself and say, ‘What we do is ridiculous.’”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
