Gatineau's Bar Minotaure Packed 200 Fans for Viral Sensation Angine de Poitrine

Angine de Poitrine, one of the hottest bands from any corner of the music world, touched down at Bar Minotaure in Gatineau on a weekend in April, and roughly 200 lucky fans crammed into the two-level Old Hull club to witness the spectacle.

The Canadian duo was catapulted into the public realm in February when a performance video was uploaded by influential Seattle radio station KEXP. The clip went viral largely because of the sheer absurdity of their head-to-toe polka-dot costumes, topped with oversized headpieces including nose-like protuberances that move with the music as they play. But their music — an instrumental onslaught of cascading microtones and angular rhythms — has closer connection to jazz than pop, making them one of the more unlikely success stories in pop history.

Since the KEXP video dropped, it's been viewed more than 12 million times. The band has been booked at major festivals including Ottawa Bluesfest, signed an upcoming gig opening for Jack White in Toronto, and recently topped Spotify's Viral 50: Global chart. For months before the Gatineau show, resale ticket prices reportedly climbed into the thousands with a wait list for the desperate.

Bar Minotaure, a spacious venue in the heart of Old Hull with a patio on the ground floor, was the final presentation in the club's 10th-anniversary concert series. The venue hosts Jazz Lundi, a free Monday-night showcase of local jazz luminaries, so Angine's performance fit naturally into the club's musical DNA.

The band had played their first Ottawa-area show the previous September at Place Laval, a parking-lot concert space in Gatineau as part of the city's summer series. That free show drew a very different scale of attention than the packed club show months later, a testament to how quickly viral momentum can transform a band's trajectory.