My latest original creation is the bizarre math rock duo from Quebec, Angine de Poitrine.
Are they 333-year-old aliens who traveled across space and time in search of hot dogs, pyramids, and rock music? Or are they two talented musicians from Quebec who put on crazy costumes and play complex looped microtonal music with complex rhythms? Who's to say? Either way, Angine de Poitrine is my new favorite band since I came across their KEXP concert video and all the reaction/analysis videos from music nerds on YouTube in spring of 2026...
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, here’s the video that went viral in spring of 2026 that inspired me to make the MOC:
The name “Angine de Poitrine” means the medical condition known in English as “angina pectoris” — chest pain, essentially. These two guys are incredibly talented musically, and have a great fashion sense too. Papier-mâché masks are the new black! (or at least, black and white polka dots) They’re 333 years old, and traveled through space and time in search of hot dogs, pyramids, and rock music. Or at least that’s their story. Other people say they’re just two musicians from a small town in Quebec who came up with the idea of performing in wild costumes so they could appear again at a venue that didn’t allow the same act twice in a week. Who’s to say? They never speak, at least in any human language (English or French); their manager translates their electronic gibberish into French for the press. Their names are Khn de Poitrine (guitar/bass double-neck and looping pedals) and Klek de Poitrine (drums).
The first thing you see is the costumes: the long noses, with the drummer’s flopping around back and forth, the head to toe polka dots, and even painted hands and feet in the case of Khn the guitar/bass player. But their music is as weird as their costumes. The guitar and bass necks have extra frets between each normal one, giving Khn access to the “microtones” (halfway between the normal notes in a scale). The music has almost a middle eastern vibe at times, as Arabic music scales use some of those notes. And the rhythms are great, too: lots of strange time signatures, syncopation, and other tricks. Do watch and listen to it if you haven’t already.
The KEXP video prompted nearly every music nerd on YouTube to post a reaction or analysis video about it. My YouTube feed was full of them. Even Rick Beato got into the act. One thing I heard from many of the YouTube videos is that it works as a reaction to AI, in the same sort of way that the Dadaist art movement was a reaction to the horrors of World War I. Or put another way, what Cirque du Soleil is to circus, these guys are to rock and roll.
After all that attention, they drew a record-breaking crowd at the Montreal Jazz Festival and launched a world tour that was sold out as soon as it was announced.
So when I saw the costumes, I thought it had to be made in LEGO. The 1×1 round tiles are perfect polka dots, after all. So I picked a scale based on the nose, which couldn’t possibly be smaller than 1×1 bricks. The hat, mask, and instruments were also pretty obviously doable in that scale. Of course, the dots are a bit too large even then, but it captures the essence of it. The models are pretty fragile, especially Khn, whose arms and hands are always falling off, and who would do a face-plant if I didn’t have his legs attached to the guitar amp he’s standing in front of. His hair (pearl gold 1×1 round cones representing the gold rope hair he has in real life) breaks off all the time as well (with LEGO rods shoved through them, each braid breaks into no more than two pieces, at least). The drummer, Klek, has a very weak connection between his legs and torso, but otherwise is pretty solid.
Besides Khn’s fragility, the biggest difficulty I faced in the build was the scale of Klek’s torso. I think I went through three or four versions of complete rebuild before I got it right. The trouble is the head is so darn big it was hard to understand the proportions; in reality the human inside only comes up to the mouth of the costume! You can see his eyes through the mouth in the videos. So the shoulder pads and the giant head threw off my sense of proportion, and I kept making the torso too big. Eventually I think I figured it out.
Another challenge was the draping fabric. The drums in the KEXP video are covered in a black blanket with white dots, and Klek is wearing an enormous drapy tunic. Getting those to look right when made out of LEGO plates was really hard. He’s subsequently gotten a new drum kit: no blanket, with the drums themselves painted black with white spots. And Khn has a new guitar/bass (seen at the Jazz Fest gig and subsequent appearances) as well, with the main visible differences being in the head stocks.
I made a YouTube video introducing this model. Please check it out, and like / subscribe / comment on it if you want to help me out. I’m trying to get the hang of shooting and editing video and could use the support. I’ll be posting another one soon with a deeper dive into building techniques used, but this one is more general:
Here’s my gallery of photos on Flickr for more details.
