Tiga’s new single ‘Shoes’ from his sophomore album ‘Ciao!’ is currently burning up the Billboard Dance Chart! It features remixes by Green Velvet, Spencer & Hill and more!

Tiga speaks with PRO MOTION about everything from working with Soulwax on his new record, to his remix work and who he is excited about on his label Turbo Recordings!

INTERVIEW

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SHOES (SPENCER & HILL REMIX) (CLIP)

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SHOES (GREEN VELVET REMIX) (CLIP)

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Tell us a little about your background.  How did you get into music?

There was always music playing in the house.  My dad collected records, I was always around records.  I just love music.  I started making tapes for people at school, the humble beginnings of any DJ and it just grew from there.  I was exposed to travel to India a lot with my parents, they had an early rave scene there.  I saw people dancing on beaches and I guess I was exposed to a certain type of DJ culture quite young.

I know that you own your own record label.  What inspired you to create Turbo Recordings?

It was the late ‘90s and I owned a nightclub and I also owned a record store and I was involved in a lot of business that were annoying me because it wasn’t quite as close to the music as I had intended them to be.  So I had the idea to open a label to work with all the artists I had met over the years as well as to promote myself and to promote other Montreal artists.  And also at the time there was nothing really like that in Canada.  It started as a pretty basic idea, just an electronic record label in Canada.  It was quite a basic objective to begin with, but it’s grown.  Just wanted to work with artists, basically.

For people that don’t know the artists that are on Turbo Recordings, who’s on there right now and who are you particularly excited about?

We have Chromeo, who’s a band based in Montreal, they’re signed to Turbo.  There’s a Russian guy named Proxy.  We have Jesper Dahlback, Swedish producer.  We have Brodinski, a French DJ.  The guys I’m most into right now are Brodinsk, Proxy and Chromeo.  I don’t like to pick favorites, but I’m with some big records right now.  There’s also another Montreal guy named Mike Mine, he’s also got some great records coming out.

How involved are you with the artists and artist development?  What kinds of things have you learned from owning a record label?

When it comes to artist development I’ve probably learned more from my own career as an artist, dealing with others.  With my own label, I’ve learned a lot about the nuts and bolts of the industry.  In the early days, I learned a lot about the mundane- manufacturing, promotion, distribution.  What I enjoyed the most is probably the manufacturing and production end of the actual process, even though those are dwindling in importance all the time now, since everything is digital.  I always like the process of actually making things and getting them in your hand.  I think the more you know about the industry in general, everything gets demystified and you get a wider, more holistic view of how things really work and what really goes into records being released and to them succeeding.  Most of what we do at Turbo is quite underground so we’re not making videos, so that’s a different aspect.  I’ve learned a lot.  I feel quite comfortable because of a lot of the things I’ve learned.

How have you progressed as an artist since “Sexor” came out in 2006?  What’s changed?  Is the sound similar or have you gone in a different direction?

I think the second album is a little more song based.  I think the songwriting became a little bit more evolved.  I moved a little bit more to the right in the sense that I moved more into pop-ier song structure and a little bit away from track-ier dance tracks.  I think that’s the easiest way to sum it up.  I think my singing got better.  I think lyrics got better.  It doesn’t necessarily mean better music, but I think I learned more about production.  I know a lot more now about how a traditional album is made since before that, most of my experience is with electronic music and techno and this time it was much more of classic studios, mixing as a separate stage, using different studios for different vocals.  It was a little bit more in depth, more complicated.  I know enough to probably never do it that way again.

I heard that you worked with Soulwax on the album and I know that you worked with them a lot in the past.  How did that collaboration come about?

I think the friendship developed first.  They liked some of my records and then I saw them DJ and I thought they were great.  We just became very good friends very quickly.  I really liked their bridge between pop and rock and hip hop culture- I think they have a very good understanding of it and they’re just very interesting people.  They’ve always been a big inspiration for me, whether it’s the books they’re reading, the movies they’re watching, their record collection, their gear, whatever.  The friendship was really the central starting point and then we had some early successes- we did the track “You’re Gonna Want Me” together and “Good as Gold” off the last album.  I think we always had fun doing it together.  I’ve changed a lot and grown a lot as a person out of this art because of our friendship.  They’ve probably been the biggest, in the last five years, influence on me.

I know that you’re very famous for your remixes of different artists- that’s how you more or less started off- such as Scissor Sisters, Depeche Mode, and Pet Shop Boys.  Is there any particular remix that you’ve done for an artist that you consider one of your favorites?

There was one I did for this guy Thomas Anderson that was relatively unknown, but it was a really, really big track, a very big club track.  The song was called “Washing Up”.  That was a very good one.  I really like one I just did for Fever Ray, they’re a Swedish band.  I really like that one, I don’t know if I like it just because it’s my most recent, but I really like that.  Of the bigger name artists, I did one for Depeche Mode, I did two for Depeche Mode, but I did one for the song “Shake the Disease”, an older song, which I really liked because when you’re dealing with a classic song like that it’s not so easy to give it a twist.  And they liked it, so I was happy.  I didn’t like my Pet Shop Boys one very much.  It’s one of my least favorites and least inspired.  I felt bad because I love Pet Shop Boys but they caught me on a bad day.

You like to do a lot of covers of different songs.  Is there any song that you didn’t write that you wish you’d been responsible for?

Like, a million songs.  “Unchained Melody”.  “Ashes to Ashes”.  “Kiss” by Prince.  “Heroes” by David Bowie.  “Sympathy for the Devil” would have been a good one.  There are so many great songs.  Songs that are a little more recent, I really like that song “Umbrella” by Rihanna, that’s a good one.  That’s the kind where you’re like “Damn!, I wish I’d wrote that!’

Who do you think is an interesting artist in music right now?  Obviously, you’re an interesting artist, but do you have anyone that’s coming up right now that you think has an interesting career so far?

I guess everyone talks about them, they’re not really new anymore, but I really liked MGMT’s first album.  I’m looking forward to their next album.  I think The Knife.  And Fever Ray is a very interesting artist.  What they’ve done, how they’ve done it, their own way, with their own visual language- I think that’s very interesting.  I think in a lot of ways it’s kind of like what Bjork did- very smart and creative.  The band called The Horrors.  And Miike Snow, I like their track.

What would you like the world to know about you?

I’m a fantastic soccer player.

Shoes