Travelling is in Tanguy's blood: born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, his family were constantly back and forth to both Belgium and Kinshasa. He grew up surrounded by the zouk and rumba music of his Congolese relatives, but it was in Brussels, while at school, that he started to make music. To begin with it was just “rapping to rap records and trying to sing to Michael Jackson records - then one day I had to do a school assignment, so I decided to rap it instead of speaking it out loud, and some people in my school were looking for a singer for their band and that's how I got into rehearsing and doing concerts.”
It's clear that Tanguy is possessed of some serious determination, and an unquenchable thirst to learn. Though he'd never played any instruments before his first band, he taught himself guitar because he'd fallen in love with Brazilian bossanova and tropicalia – unique and complex sounds both – and didn't know anyone else who could play them, so though he should do it himself. Likewise, he started learning to tap out rhythms on an MPC sampler because he wasn't hearing the beats that he wanted anywhere else. “I recorded sounds everywhere on my little Dictaphone,” he says; “then I switched to producing and putting overdubs on things. As long as I've been writing songs, I've been producing it too.” That is to say, that the sound of the songs, and the songwriting itself, were always part and parcel of the same process.
- 26/10 LIVE @ Democrazy, Gent
- 29/11 LIVE @ Botanique, Brussel