Tiga Puts The World To Rights

Tiga announced himself to the UK in 2001 when his track 'Sunglasses At Night' swept through the underground and into the singles chart, but the real story of the man is the substance of what the Canadian did before and since, and the flawless way he is able to articulate it.

Having helped break the likes of Duke Dumont, Chromeo, Azari & III and Boys Noize, his label Turbo Recordings is on its 164th release, so we thought he would be a good man to speak to about the changing face of record label business, but our interviewer Mike Boorman had other ideas, taking him on a series of tangents that ranged from the state of English football up to the history of the Montreal party scene.

We join the interview after a question about how Paolo Maldini felt compelled to sign a copy of Tiga's legendary album, Ciao, when the unlikely pair shared a press conference, which led to a dissection of the problems with English football.

Tiga blamed England's World Cup demise on the fact that the Premier League doesn't have any team in it that has more than three players that are part of the England starting XI - that Germany have it much better with Bayern Munich's ability to school such a large proportion of the national talent. But Mike wasn't having it....  

...that's a very salient point Tiga, but what about Brazil? They have won the most World Cups in history. You can't exactly say that their infrastructure nurtures their best players. They're nearly all in Europe.

The situation's changed now though. Just look at them in the last World Cup. They were horrible! I think it's a more recent thing.

Football always changes, and to compete now, at this level, I really do believe that you have to have a core. Put it this way, if the other teams have a core group of players who always play together and you don't, you're always going to be at a disadvantage.

So other than Maldini being part of the same press launch as you (hear one of the singles, 'Shoes', from the album that Maldini signed below), are there any other players you've had any dealings with? I always wonder which footballers properly get on one at the weekend - I bet some of them do.

I think a lot of them now are super pro. I think there's a big group of them that are super straight. But there'll be loads of them that are totally in to EDM!

You know it's funny, if you follow any of the footballers on twitter, it's like they're all in Ibiza. I was in Ibiza this summer and I was thinking, 'why am I not seeing them? I know Xavi's around here somewhere, in his swimming trunks, how come I never see them?'

I did see Peter Crouch in Space once.

Hahaha, and he is the one you really would see! He can't hide. I'm just trying to think... I bumped into Patrick Vieira once in a hotel, also Dimitar Berbatov. But I never seem to meet the players I want to meet.

But you're a big Barcelona fan aren't you? Surely one or two of them would have been to Sonar all the times you've played there?

No, I haven't. And you know, Barcelona players are not party guys. The people I know out there like club owners and promoters all say that it's basically a prequisite that if you play for Barcelona, you're serious and you don't party.

I think I heard that Pique used to party a bit when he was younger, and also Fabregas, but it's not really done. All the players that graduated from the school, like Iniesta, Xavi - they're football nerds. They're not having it.

And now for a real question. So this party you're playing in London on September 20th for Mixmag is a good demonstration of how the industry seems to work these days, that in order for something to continue to be a creative force, you have to diversify beyond your original creative output.

So with your record label hat on, do you worry that the lack of meat on the bone could be bad for creativity? That there isn't enough money to make good music sustainable?

All these state of the union questions are tricky because they're big issues. If you say meat on the bone with labels, well yeah - I think it's partly true. When you take the money out of something, it's a curious thing. I know people will bitch about capitalism and everything but money keeps things honest in a weird way. When there's profit, real profit motivation, there is a certain creative efficiency.

When you take that out - and we've felt it at Turbo - when you get into that zone where you're like 'hey - it doesn't really matter, we're not gonna make a lot, we're not gonna lose a lot', it can be a problem creatively.

There's good honesty in that answer - not many would admit it. So do you agree that limitations and professional norms actually help creativity?

I do agree. But it's really a personal thing because there are people who are cut from different cloths that are very artistic in that they truly don't have a commercial bone in their body, and whether that makes them a career or not is almost luck. Sometimes by chance those people will get picked up and become rich and become famous.

Then there are other people, and I think most people, especially DJs in dance music, fall into the category of artist entrepreneurs, where they do have a bit more of a sense of business and structure. And I do agree with you, limitations help. It's always helped me. It's motivation, and it's just real - it's like a real life in a way.

It's fine when you're 21 and you just want to make your mix tapes and give them out to people and do your free party or play in your warehouse for $100, then that's fine - that's if you want to start the race. But if you want to finish the race, surrounded by creative work when you're 40 or 50 or 60, you have to find a way of paying your bills - it has to become real.

So is it fair to say that you started the race by being a music businessman, but that this was in order to push your creativity afterwards?

Yes, 100%. For me it was 100% calculating. It was like: nobody was giving me an opportunity, nobody was hiring me to DJ. I had to create my own parties and my own scene to give myself a job.

So you threw your legendary parties, you had your record shop, nightclub, label etc. in Montreal, but I'm interested to know what the trajectory of the Montreal scene was. For want of a less controversial word, what were you copying? Was it more European or more US for example?

Ummmmm, that's a very good question actually. In all the years I've been doing interviews I haven't been asked that, but you're right, that is what it is, everyone is copying something. I think for me it was a combination.

In essence it was European, it was white, it was like the UK rave scene mixed with the German techno scene, and back to the magazine thing we talked about earlier, you would have a copy of Muzik or Jockey Slut or whatever - that was when you would see magazines having a massive influence.

I guess I was kinda copying the UK scene. I would visit, I would travel and I'd go to the record stores and I would see the flyers and you would copy some of that artwork. Then you would go to the parties and get ideas about visuals or whatever.

Then you've got the American scene, specifically New York. That was an influence because we'd go more often, but more in the sense of partying and fashion.

But the sound there was a lot more black and disco influenced than the sound in Europe at the time, right?

Originally in Montreal, that was a big influence. Montreal is a liberal place, it was quite a big disco city. But that sound was a little bit like how you would react against your parents. It's only later you come back and embrace it, but initially you want to fight against it, so originally we were much more interested in hard techno from Germany and breakbeat from the UK - the things that seemed much more extreme you know?

We wanted to walk into the record stores here that was all Masters At Work, Roger Sanchez and stuff, and we wanted to be more extreme, like 'oh, look how fast we play our records, look how extreme we are' etc.

So in terms of a sound, how does it work in Montreal now? If we look at what happened when the UK copied a sound from the US, quite quickly we had reinvented and created all kinds of different genres and what you could reasonably call UK sounds, albeit through the backdoor from the US. But what happened in Montreal? Does it have its own sound? Did it ever?

That's also a good question! We had quite a hedonistic streak in Montreal because we were close to New York, there's a big gay scene, a low drinking age etc… it has a little bit of a Berlin vibe where people know about partying as part of the culture.

But musically, since the nineties, I don't know if we ever really developed our own sound properly. To me it never felt crystalised as an actual sound.

I think that the UK is more lucky than Montreal and Canada in terms of geography. So the ability for different cities to feed off each other helps fads become genuine scenes, which have their own soundtracks and then help create genres. Do you think there's something in that?

There's lots of things I bitch about with the UK… I've fallen in and out of love with the place over the years… but one thing that has been a constant is that I think that musically it's just an incredible place. There's no denying it. Especially for electronic music. There's something magical. Especially London, Manchester, Sheffield - there's just no denying.

Whether it starts with Detroit or Chicago… whether it borrows from Black America… what it does with that is consistently modern and inspirational. It's a bit like how hip hop is in the US - you just got it. I don't know exactly how it works… whether it's because those places are so grim, hahaha, or whether it's a Joy Division (hear their finest work, Love Will Tear us Apart', below) thing or whether it's a London thing, I don't now exactly how it works, but it's pretty amazing!

The other thing that's really cool is musically, how it keeps getting reinvented. So you see one year it'll be grime, then another year it's like speed garage or whatever - the point is that each young generation in the UK wants to come up with its own take and the kids that come up are not content to just party. Well as I think in America, with the exception of hip hop, it tends to be just to dance - just to party.

Now in the UK it's just so in the fabric of society. It's just like real music lovers. People who are really into it. And you have the radio to support it - that's very important. Culturally it has a prominence that it doesn't have in a lot of other places. 

If you want to join the rest of the music lovers for Mixmag Live presents Tiga at Village Underground on September 20th, tickets are still available here

Interview: Mike Boorman (follow him on twitter here)

Tickets are no longer available for this event