2014-05-05

 
Are you excited to play at We Are Festival? Yeah, I fly to Detroit right after so it will be a short stay but yeah! Fatboy Slim is playing, Annie Mac, Duke Dumont, Solomun...I took a lot of the summer off last year, so this summer is gonna be a big festival season for me. It's good to be back in that environment. We Are Fest should be great because I really love Annie.

Will you be at any other festivals this summer? I'll be at Exit in Serbia, Sonar in Barcelona, Melt in Germany, Movement in Detroit...

I'll be at Movement too! I went for the first time last year and haven't shut up about it since. That's one of the festivals I'm most excited for! I was there three years ago and I had such a good time. Oddly enough, I'd never been to Detroit before I went to Movement and I just loved the city. It reminded me a bit of Montreal.

You actually opened one of the first after-hours clubs in Montreal back in the 90s. You recently played at Stereo, one of the contemporary leaders in after-hours venues. Can you compare the two experiences? I played Stereo in December and I was quite struck by just how similar it was. The later on you get in a night, usually the freaks come out. By 10 am, what you're left with is this timeless shade of weirdo. For me, my memories of Sona are different because I was an owner – it was more stressful, not as easy, not as chillax.

So, despite dabbling in a few different genres, you are a techno lover at heart. I think techno, to non-electronic music fans, has a bit of a bad rep. It comes off as quite pretentious, even when it doesn’t mean to be. What would you say to nonbelievers? That's a good question. I think techno is a pretty wide term. In a lot of ways the people who don't like techno, their stereotype of what techno is, is accurate. But techno is an acquired taste. There are people who naturally love it, and there are people who don't. If you love it, you have to enjoy the repetition, the space, the texture. For me, in the beginning, techno was the soundtrack to everything I wanted to be in life, everything I wanted. It was an exciting, ambitious, passionate time in my life, and that was the soundtrack.

I think that's so true, and for me, it's so special that every good memory has some kind of music associated with it, and hearing a certain track takes me back. Music transports. Definitely, definitely. Another thing is that back in the day, techno was about the future. People were obsessed with this idea that "this is the music of the future!" And even with the parties, and the graphic design, and the lights, it was all about wanting to be futuristic and high-tech. And the sound went with that! The newness of it, you don't hear people talk about that anymore. And that was what was interesting when Skrillex came out too. No one had ever heard that before.

So, this next questions comes from two of my friends who really wanted to know what the inspiration behind “Shoes” was. What shoes were you wearing when you made it and what shoes are you wearing now? Right now I'm wearing red socks, no shoes. But I was wearing old Air Jordans earlier. So, when I wrote it....God, that was so long ago. I have no idea. [Laughs] As for the inspiration, these things happen so quickly, it's hard for me to remember...but I think it started with the hair. The idea of seeing someone's messy hair and wanting to comb it out! That was the little seed. Then it developed into this creepy character, these are his weird little sexual things, and from there it got into shoes and gloves. Like I said, these things happen so fast. It gets sufficiently developed before you have the chance to think, "Oh man, you're an idiot."

On that note, a lot of your tracks have this kind of anthemic quality in their lyrics, which I love. What is your goal with your lyrics? It's so nice to hear that because when I started out, I was never trained in songwriting or anything, and I had built up quite a romantic idea of what it meant to make music. When I started to try out songwriting, it was like bad high school poetry! [Laughs] A bit overdramatic, not particularly good. But now, my best lyrical ideas are kind of like slogans. It’s not the narrative, especially with dance music. You reduce it to one key phrase, and if you do it right, that key phrase lives on this line between so stupid and so clever. The asterisk on the end is that people remember it in the taxi ride home.

It’s funny how true that is. I’m thinking about that one Benoit & Sergio track… “Walk and Talk!” It’s funny you bring that up because I love that record! It reminds me a lot of my own tracks - similar palette, similar structure. I mean, if you actually think about it, that verse, that [sings] “My baby does K all day…” It’s so stupid. But in that context, it’s so perfect.

In a similar sense, your recent collaboration with Audion, “Let’s Go Dancing,” is quickly becoming a classic. Where do you like to go dancing? I love dancing! That’s something that’s really changed, people don’t really dance anymore. That’s something that I hope comes back into fashion! I’ve spent half my life watching crowds from the DJ booth and it really is something you notice. You’ll get to a certain city and be like, “Woah,” because the crowd is dancing - and really dancing, none of this hand in the air, jumping around crap. It’s so cool. It’s the best thing in the world. Anyway, where do I like to go dancing? Hmm...It’s a bit embarrassing but I like dancing to Goa trance!

Do you have a signature dance move? [Laughs] When I was really young - like 8 or 9 - I’d go to these parties in India that my dad would DJ. This is a very weird, personal memory, but I remember this old friend of my parents, and I overheard him telling my dad, “Hey, I saw Tiga the other day at the party, he’s a really good dancer!” [Laughs] And I heard that, and I was so proud. Years later, I was thinking about it and I was like, “Hell yeah!” because I thought I was such a good dancer.

Well, you probably were. Yeah! Yeah, I probably was. But the other thing that’s so cool about dancing is that it’s one of the things where it’s really about how relaxed you are. If you’re really no bullshit, no inhibitions, odds are you’re gonna be a good dancer! You can’t really fake it.

You’ve recently celebrated 16 years at the helm of Turbo Recordings. Has the label turned into everything you hoped it would be? No. But only because I never had a real, concrete vision for it - I didn’t want to make the biggest record label, or whatever. It never had that unified vision. In the sense of achieving goals, yes. All I really wanted when I started was to have access and to work with all of these amazing people. I wanted to collaborate, and that 100% happened. I’m pretty happy with what it’s become.

This content was originally posted here: http://pulseradio.net/articles/2014/05/tiga-interview-may-5-2014

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