How Angine de Poitrine’s global success benefits its friends at home in Quebec

Jeff Beaulieu co-founded Drummond Vinyl in 2023 as a record manufacturer catering to Quebec-based bands. Though the work was gratifying to the musician and audiophile, the print runs were small—at once a reflection of Quebec’s vibrant music scene and the language barrier surrounding it.

Then Angine de Poitrine came knocking.

The Quebec duo exploded onto the international scene earlier this year, pairing their intricate, genre-bending music with costumes reminiscent of Monty Python’s black knight and pyjama-clad Lady Gaga. Angine de Poitrine—the French term for angina pectoris, a heart condition—has attracted the attention of Foo Fighter’s Dave Grohl, Jack White and Metallica’s Lars Ulrich. A celebration of weirdness and a proudly analogue rebuttal to AI slop, Angine de Poitrine has sold out venues around the world.

Guitarist Khn and drummer Klek claim to be aliens and don’t speak French, per se, communicating instead in a Klingon-ish patois that requires patience and subtitles to understand. Yet the duo has made sure that the lucrative mechanics of capitalizing on Angine’s buzz falls to companies based in their earthly home of Quebec. The result might be called l’effet Angine: a sudden windfall in the province thanks to the band’s rise from costumed oddity to global phenomenon in less than a year.

In February, when the band tapped Drummond to commit its lyric-free microtonal diddies to vinyl, Beaulieu and his staff found themselves working 13-hour days to produce some 30,000 records—roughly 30 times an average print run. Some copies of those albums now fetch nearly $1,000 online.

“It was imperative that we be Québécois,” says Beaulieu. “It was like Angine wanted all their friends to benefit from what was going on around the band. Most people say they’re going to stay local when they get big. Angine is actually staying true to it.”

It’s not just vinyl. When Angine chose Montreal-based Inprint to print their band merchandise, the company inked roughly 30,000 band T-shirts in less than four months. Quebec-based Godin guitars has fielded a barrage of requests from dealers for the conjoined bass-and-guitar contraption the company produced for Khn.

Angine’s made-in-Quebec mantra extends to Montreal’s Third Side Music, Angine’s music publisher, and to Spectacles Bonzai, Angine’s Longueuil-based management company that has doubled in size since the beginning of the year in order to properly navigate the band through the myriad demands of fame.

It further extends to the many Quebec bands that Angine has brought on their tour, including Montreal psych-rock outfit Population II. The band recently finished five nights opening for Angine de Poitrine in the U.S. Lars Ulrich was in attendance for three. “They are on a big mission to make sure Quebec is on the international stage,” says Tristan Lacombe, Population II guitarist and keyboardist.

Quebec is particularly well equipped to deal with global renown. The province’s star-making system has produced international artists, actors, filmmakers and circus mavens, as well as a cadre of vedettes who occupy outsized cultural space in Quebec compared to their equivalents in English-speaking provinces. Quebecers tend to produce more cultural output, and consume more of what they produce. The province spends more than double per capita on cultural services than neighbouring Ontario, and is fiercely protective of the domain, in large part because it’s the main conduit for Quebec’s French fact.

These roots tend to be enduring. Consider Arcade Fire, which has long touted its Montreal origin story—despite being fronted by an English-speaker from California. Khn and Klek themselves still faithfully return to their pied-à-terres in faraway Saguenay after being on the road, touring-related logistical nightmares be damned.

“To have an indie band that is the product of Quebec culture and helps foster that culture around the world is something to be incredibly proud of,” says Bonzai founder Sebastien Collin.

Because Angine de Poitrine rocketed to fame through buzz, not an A & R strategy, it has been able to control more of what goes on in its orbit. With Inprint, this meant not only having a Quebec mailing address but environmentally friendly water-based printing as well. Company founder Alex Chavel estimates that Angine-related shmata will account for 30% of the company’s bottom line this year. “A lot of bands are controlled by a label, and you lose control of some of those decisions when they get to a certain size,” says Chavel. “But with Angine, I really felt like they wanted to be local as much as possible and have things done a certain way, whereas most bands don’t give a shit.”

The band’s global reach has nonetheless forced it to make certain concessions to its Quebec-first policy. It has farmed out some vinyl production to the U.S. Europe and Toronto to keep up with the demand, and looked to other companies to fulfill overseas merchandise orders. “Logistically and environmentally, it doesn’t make sense to produce a T-shirt in Quebec and send it to Australia,” says Collin.

Yet no one thinks the band will ever forgo Quebec. Drummond is bracing for another likely run of Agine de Poitrine vinyl. Inprint is thinking hoodies and possibly a kid’s line of Angine garb. Godin is working on a new model of Khn’s guitar. Best of all, Collin said Khn and Klek are busy writing new music. Translation: l’effet Angine will endure.