Angine de Poitrine and its influences: from Fripp to math rock

A name that sounds like a medical diagnosis and hits like an emergency. Angine de Poitrine, the French duo recording in damp basements in Lyon, builds its noise with industrial electronics, unleashed guitars and impossible structures. The question of their influences has several layers, and none of them is comfortable.

From Discipline to the instruction manual

The most cited reference is King Crimson, specifically the 1981 album Discipline. Anyone analyzing guitarist Jérôme Rousselet's patterns finds Robert Fripp's fingerprint in the New Standard Tuning and in synthetic harmonics, but not a clone: the result goes through a blender of noise and bargain-bin electronics. Some go further and argue that Discipline works as the direct formal template for much of the later math rock, with Massacre (Frith, Laswell, Hayward) as progenitor and Don Caballero as the self-confessed heir to Fripp's broken arpeggios.

Microtonality and free jazz as DNA

The conceptual layer runs deeper. Some separate formal influence from DNA: King Crimson would be the practical manual; Steve Reich, the conceptual substrate. The duo's music plays with microtonal melody over tempered harmony, adding quarter tones without entirely breaking from the Western foundation. But the lineage of chaos also looks to free jazz: Sonny Sharrock and his Black Woman, recorded in 1969, turned the guitar into a leaking electrocardiogram; Henry Threadgill and his group Air peine up a puzzle-composition path. Derek Bailey also slips into that genealogy, the guitarist who dismantled the instrument before the label even existed, along with his connection to Jamie Muir, the King Crimson percussionist who ended up in a monastery.

A chain of thefts and homages

The healthiest approach is to accept that experimental rock is a chain of consensual thefts. Fred Frith accused Fripp of stealing a tuning from him; Frith in turn drinks from Bailey; Don Caballero built on Crimson; Battles, Tortoise and Slint fed from the same sources with different ears. Angine de Poitrine stands at that crossroads with a signature of its own: live shows that sound like short rhythmic loops, superimposed sequences of 3, 4, 5 and up to 11 steps, and a guitarist who plays barefoot to handle a table full of pedals with his feet. Some define them, with a half-smile, as the John Zorn cover band nobody asked for.

The unsolved riddle

One clue remains unfinished: the guitarist's favorite guitarist. The hints point to a name similar to angine, with duos alongside Fred Frith, perhaps the band Ange, but nobody has closed the case. What if the charm of a band that sounds like nobody else lies precisely in that? Knowing where the chaos comes from doesn't make it any less chaotic.