Tiga

Tiga built a scene before he built a catalogue. The Montreal DJ threw parties and bought DNA Records years before he released an album. When his own records arrived, they mixed electro, house and pop covers, and won him a Juno Award.

Montreal beginnings

Born in Montreal on 18 September 1974, Tiga spent part of his early life in Goa, India, and went to Selwyn House School back in Montreal. He started throwing small parties and street promotions in the city in 1990. In 1994 he bought DNA Records, and in 1998 he founded his own label, Turbo Recordings, which became the base for his music and for the artists around him.

Sunglasses at Night

Tiga’s first big record was a cover. With the Finnish producer Zyntherius, he remade Corey Hart’s 1983 single “Sunglasses at Night”. Recorded in 2001, the Tiga & Zyntherius version reached No. 25 on the UK singles chart in 2002. Around the same time he mixed an edition of !K7’s DJ-Kicks series.

Sexor and the Soulwax connection

His debut album, Sexor, came out on Different Recordings on 6 February 2006. Jesper Dahlbäck produced most of it, with Soulwax and Jori Hulkkonen on other tracks. Alongside originals it covered Public Enemy’s “Louder Than a Bomb”, Nine Inch Nails’ “Down in It” and Talking Heads’ “Burning Down the House”. The singles started long before the album, with “Pleasure from the Bass” in June 2004 and “Louder Than a Bomb” in March 2005. “You Gonna Want Me”, made with Soulwax and Jake Shears, reached No. 64 in the UK, and “(Far from) Home” No. 65. Sexor reached No. 5 in Flanders and won the 2007 Juno Award for Dance Recording of the Year.

Ciao! and later records

Ciao! followed on 27 April 2009, on Turbo and PIAS Recordings. Soulwax produced most of it; James Murphy produced “Gentle Giant” and co-produced “Sex O’Clock” with Jori Hulkkonen, and Jesper Dahlbäck co-produced “Mind Dimension” and “Shoes”, which Tiga wrote with Chilly Gonzales. All the tracks were co-written and co-produced by Tiga, and the album reached No. 15 in Flanders. “Let’s Go Dancing” (2013), a collaboration with Matthew Dear’s Audion project, and “Bugatti” (2014) both won Winter Music Conference awards. His third album, No Fantasy Required, came out on Ninja Tune in 2016, and in 2023 he released L’Ecstasy with Hudson Mohawke.

Tiga’s records sit where club music meets pop: short hooks over machine drums. For more electronic music with that edge, keep digging with DJ Hell, Ivan Smagghe and “Jeffer” by Boys Noize.