Quinn

And now, for something completely different

“You... you surprise me, Mister Tuvok, which is a rare and lovely gift to a Q.”

This line is from Star Trek Voyager, an episode featuring the omnipotent Q who in this episode illustrate just how “stuck“ the Q continuum is.

“Because it has all been said. Everyone has heard everything, seen everything; they haven’t had to speak to each other in ten millennia. There’s nothing left to say.“ - Q

I can see how folks see the world this way now. The sheer volume of media we take in is just too much. Recently I found on YouTube 1970s “Scorpions“, The B52s, and all these other really eclectic pieces of music, like the 1969 Trout Mask Replica from Captain Beefheart and everything in between. Mazy Star just recently showed up and Hope Sandoval is just as captivating now as she was when I was much younger. Philip Glass, composers, avant-garde to classical, jazz, blues, swing, folk, every genre, every culture, digital, acoustic, hip-hop: everything. Well, everything except a lot of modern music.

I devour music. It stays in my head. I can put a lot of music on replay just by thinking of it. I listen to all these parts and I can pick apart the pieces. I love the analysis, and I love to just feel music.

Gene Ammons for example, is a musical discovery I treasure. “Play Me“ is an incredible song that soothes my soul.

One of my most favorite performances ever is from a woman named Claudia Emmanuela Santoso in the voice Germany, with her performance of “Never Enough“ from The Greatest Showman soundtrack. Her delivery is just incredible. And, I despise The Voice as a franchise. Apologies if that offends, but I cannot endorse musical competition because it traps vocal performances in what can be licensed. I view it as being fake. She changed my mind.

Her audition: controlled emotion. If you watch the video of her performance, the second time she sings the song (the audience cheered her to an encore) is better than the first. In the moments from her first performance to her second, she gained confidence. It showed. And she’s singing with braces. I still don’t watch The Voice or anything else like that, but not seeing her performance would have been a moment that I would have regretted in the after life.

I have seen and heard so many wonderful things: Hamilton stands out. What a performance. There is a plethora of artistry out there that is just incredible. But, after a while a lot of music starts to blend together. The arrangement and score of “Never Enough“ sounds like other scores. The curse of listening to thousands of hours of music and being a musician is that at some point you get very used to musical arrangements. One crave’s something different.

It is why I can hear a lot of popular music and just know intuitively that it’s most likely a few specific chords. Find the key, and you can hear the intervals, know where the song is going pretty easily. That is overly simplistic, there is a lot of great music out there that is challenging and rewarding to learn in every genre. Femi Kuti comes to mind. Flea is releasing “Honora“ and what I have heard this is him at his pinnacle.

But for the most part: music arrangement just sounds the same to me. CAGED.

Wait, what door did we just go through?

And then, walks into my life “Angine de Poitrine” (AdP) an experimental group from Quebec.

And, I am at a loss for words. Seriously, I’m having a hard time writing the next sentence. AdP is something special I just cannot put my finger on. They use microtonal instruments, experiments, complex metering, syncopated “free” time, polyrhythms, atonality, loops, surf/hypnotic/maqam(?) riffs, and crazily enough it grooves.

Microtonality is not for everyone. However, for me it is like they have a quantum field linked to my brain, pulling out the paint spatters of fifty years of music listening that has somehow become a Jackson Pollock masterpiece. They are just fun to experience.

The comment section is just hilarious to read on their KEXP performance. They are unique. One of the best comments I hear is: “This is no f-ing LLM, AI BS. It has restored my faith in humanity“. Yep. The other comment what was spot on: “Never encountered such an enormous barrier to entry for wanting to cover a song“. Sir, yes sir. “My wife isn't going to appreciate a single second of this“. Shame that. “This is our reward for a quarter century of Coldplay“ Amen.

“The first thing that makes sense in 2026.“ I could not agree more as in this year that makes the least sense to witness in my entire life, this lovely strange experiment has graced me with a rare gift: I just listened.

Honestly, when I saw the KEXP video and how costumed up they were, I passed the first time. Then, I realized I was getting complacent in all this packaged nonsense.

So, I dove in. And the most wonderful thing happened: I paid attention. I focused. It’s not about listening to some recycled lyric that I’ve heard over and over again. It’s not bound by traditional western music theory entirely or the repetitive banal four on the floor for three and a half minutes. There isn’t a natural standard tuned G or D chord anywhere. It’s not about anything really but being in the moment. What are they doing? How does the song progress? Wait, did they just change time signatures again? Is that 14/4 broken out into 8, 3 and… something? 5/4? With an extra beat? Fantastic. It just makes me smile. I actually giggled.

I cannot begin to express how rare it is for a musician to say: this is interesting. It was like the first time listening to The Mars Volta. Or, listening to Victor Borgia perform Debussy. Or, Wu Tang. It is just so cool to have a real first time experience listening to music that I cannot anticipate. Heck most of the time I don’t even really care about the meter, time, key - it’s just mind candy for me.

I’ll be honest I am happy to jump on the wagon with these mad geniuses. In this world, where most entertainment I find is just a riff on the same thing AdP are refreshing different dialect of musicality.

Angine de Poitrine is a wonderful mashup of so many different techniques and styles that grab your attention that their music is a level of mastery that is exciting to see. It has made this old dog appreciate the new tricks.

And for this Q that is a rare and lovely gift.