A Full Soundscape: Angine de Poitrine & Death From Above 1979 at Ottawa Bluesfest

July 17th, 2026, at the Ottawa Bluesfest. Words & photos by Edie Olender

Can two people be a crowd? Two people can absolutely sound like one. Angine de Poitrine and Death From Above 1979, both groups consisting of only two members, showed that you do not need a lot to make something beautiful happen. 

Angine de Poitrine is a math rock duo from Quebec that went viral for their eccentric, yet anonymous identities and microtonal, complex rhythms. Dressed in their papier-mache polka-dotted costumes, they took to the RBC stage Friday night at Ottawa Bluesfest. Usually the openers have a lightly packed crowd as people trickle in throughout the evening. This time, however, fans sprinted to the barricade as soon as the gates opened. It was difficult to tell, but it appeared to me that Angine de Poitrine brought in a larger crowd than each of the previous two headliners. It was a sea of polka dots, with some fans even wearing their own papier-mache hats or full-body suits. 

If you have not yet heard their music, it is worth checking out. Making use of microtonal sounds and polyrhythms, their music explores a soundscape that is uncommon in Western culture; few bands beyond King Gizzard and the Wizard Lizard come to mind. The secret to sounding like a crowd with only two people? Angine de Poitrine makes use of their loop pedals, which is no easy feat. It requires stepping on the pedal at the exact right moment, perfectly in time with the beat of the drummer. Because it is difficult to have the loop hit at the right moment, Angine de Poitrine creatively uses a singular loop with new beat subdivisions, generating novel, funky sounds over the same base loop. This makes for sounds that tickle your brain, in part explaining their growing popularity. 

Angine de Poitrine

Over at the Hard Rock stage, another band was showing how two people can make a lot happen. Death From Above 1979, a Toronto duo that was big in the early 2000s, consists of only drums, vocals, and heavily distorted bass. Their secret to sounding like a crowd? The bass is played like a guitar, which acts as a driving force in generating full sound. Coupled with the raw vocals and emotion, there is a lot for your brain to take in. 

Many years ago, my dad was at an old venue called the Ford Plant. He was talking with another man about this and that, then this man got up and walked onto the stage. It turns out that it was Death From Above 1979 vocalist and drummer Sebastien Grainger. My dad told me they started the band as a way to avoid having to get real jobs. Just two ordinary guys, ordinary enough that my dad did not even realise he was talking to a big musician, yet the sound they can achieve is anything other than ordinary. Perhaps that is the take-home message of this show: not only that you do not need much to make art, but that anonymous, ordinary people can make incredible art. 

Death From Above