Gigs’ Reviews : Austral Winter Gigs Part 2 - Golgot VR and the Deadly Bites

Maudit Tangue Festival - 12/10/2019 -Le Kabardock - Le Port, La Réunion

Sharks and mosquitoes aren’t the only scary animals on Reunion Island. Tangues, those cute, little creatures are kind of aggressive hedgehogs... Spiky, wild and snooping around, that’s the perfect image and name for a local punk label ! Here we are ! Maudit Tangue Records, once again, a label hold by the best pirates’ captains you could find : Pascale and Gaël !

They released in August their fifth Maudit Tangue Cd compilation featuring 30 rock bands (punk rock, garage, psycho, synth-punk, psyche, post-punk, hxc, indie, etc..., every tribes is represented), coming from many countries surrounding Indian Ocean (La Reunion, Australia, South Africa, India, Madagascar, Kenya and Malaysia).

As usual for each of their releases, a little festival was settled down and Le Kabardock, located in the city of Le Port, was chosen this time for this event. This classy place, working with public-fundings and scheduling many national indie rock and international worl music bands, with a good sound and quite cheap beers, has a capacity of something like 300 people. 

Four bands of the compilation played there that night : two South African bands (Julia Robert and the Deadly Bites) and two local ones (Golgot VR and Mothra Slapping Orchestra).

Golgot VR

Golgot VR, a local one-man-band, opened the night. 

Hervé (RV>VR), a guy in his lower mid-40’s, was bred as a child with Amstrad’s games and Japanese series, grew up with the sound of the Cure, the Pixies and les Thugs, moved on to the sunny Reunion Island to raise his children ten years ago and, to fight against tropical boredom, has settled down, on his own, a dozen of songs since. Any ressemblance with someone you know ?

After the self-released Kontener ep (Cd - 2012), Maudit Tangue Records released a Cd album, Gasoline, back in 2015, with his best song : Road 62 !

Hypnotic minimalist beat on the sampler/rhythm box, energetic efficient guitar play, catchy electro-punk atmosphere with many touches of new-wave and indie rock, piercing voice similar to the one of Robert Smith, French or English lyrics mostly dealing with his local daily life and his geeks’ stuffs, cool attitude and serene strengh with his Love And Noise Experiment’s t-shirts, it has ever been really fun to catch him live. 

He was the very first « band » I checked around and he gave me a good hand for the Mark Sultan’s tour. Thanx again for the help ! Before his definitive move to the mainland a few days after the festival, this local hero organised a good-bye tour to play the best local places one last time.

Combined effect of the dark atmosphere of the place, of the soundman who deeply lowered the sound of the guitar and of his wish to give the best to all his friends gathered for this very last show ? Whatever, the gig was really punchy, the sound pretty cold and almost gothic, the audience excited. His best show for sure !

So long, man ! I hope you’ll keep on going with your music in the city of Tours ! All the best and cheers !

The Deadly Bites

The Cape Town synth-punk band Julia Robert played after Golgot VR. A pleasure to check again this jumpy arty disco-punk sound led by a charismatic girly singer. Check the review made earlier on this band, on this young active Cape Town DIY scene and the Now Now Just Now label.

The Deadly Bites from Johannesbourg, SA, were the third band to play the festival.

When the four smart-looking guys and girl in this band appeared on stage, I was kind of stuck by their impressive style: classy clothes, three quarter pants with boots, hipsters’ haircuts and arms covered with tatooes. Whatever was the music like, the visual side of the show was garanteed…

The music ? Their fuzzy, noisy indie rock tunes weren’t that bad, but I was rather more into the few post-punk songs they played. Those ones had indeed that delicious smell of the early Siouxsie and the Banshees, their mid-tempo guitar/bass/drums trio backed up the pretty piercing voice, coming from heart and soul, of the girly singer who played awesome solos on the side guitar. Try for instance the Explode! track on the Maudit Tangue 5 compilation, which is worth of many current Australian songs. And by the way, they also released a 7-tracks Cd, Mind Drain, in 2019.

Something else to add ? The baby sitter’s clock was ticking on, we had quite a long road to drive back home, so we left before the last band, Mothra Slapping Orchestra (there’s also an early review somewhere in the previous pages).