Tiga keeps detonating bombs

Tiga and ol’ mate. Tiga plays in Australia this weekend, take an Uber to get to the show but ONLY if it’s a Bugatti.
Source: Supplied

Special treatment for a fanboy.

It’s worth looking ahead because right now his club banger Bugatti follows a seemingly endless purple patch for the diminutive house cat: Plush, Let’s Go Dancing, Shoes, You Gonna Want Me feat. Jake Shears, Louder Than A Bomb, the last two from his smash record Sexor…all the way back to Sunglasses At Night.

Tiga knows what’s up. His quality control has been impeccable while other DJs like Felix Da Housecat got stuck in a trap.

The 40 year old manchild is humble. “It doesn’t always feel like that. Internally you feel ups and downs. I always try and find something new and exciting. With DJing I’m always trying to find new records I wanna play. It becomes a habit. In a way if you can survive long enough you become like a shark,” he says.

“I’m quite competitive in a way, I’m competitive with myself too. I get bored easily. I’m a thrillseeker!” he says, chuckling and clearly jet lagged. Tiga’s faux bravado is never far from the surface, he’s by far the most entertaining DJ on Twitter. Do yourself a favour and follow @ciaotiga.

I think a 17k rose gold digital watch might actually be rock bottom for our species.

— Tiga (@ciaotiga) March 10, 2015

Best feeling in the world! When your friend comes to the booth and you drop your new collab together and its a bomb @boysnoize

— Tiga (@ciaotiga) March 7, 2015

Only Aussies have the balls to call avocados avos.

— Tiga (@ciaotiga) March 12, 2015

His latest jam Bugatti was always gonna be a hit. You knew it from the first time you heard the dopey, meanings-riddled refrain “Girl comes up to me, says ‘What you driving? I said ‘Bugatti’”

Everybody picked it would be a hit right?

Wrong.

“I played that record to loads of labels and managers and nobody cared about that track. Most people didn’t take it seriously. People thought it was a demo until it reached the club and DJs and thennnn it happened,” he says, explaining “all the record labels passed on it. Bugatti was textbook inspiration. The track was written and finished before I knew it. I was thinking about the car. I can sit and bulls–t people, everyone wants a story, sometimes things just happen, it’s a silly little idea, executed properly,” he shrugs.

“It’s amazing how a track like Bugatti can survive, having the confidence to say ‘This is finished.’ Even though there’s only four parts to song, you need to stand by it.”

Later, the idea was floated to add a rapper to the track for further crossover appeal.

“Randomly, Bugatti featured in the UK on some show and guests on a panel critique tracks and Vic Mensa was on there and he loved Bugatti and said he’d love to rap on it, he was effusive in his praise,” he recalls. “The label in England heard that and it gave it a public legitimacy. There was a paper with a big list of names on it and one of your countrywomen was on it,” he says cheekily.

Igloo Australia! “But for me there was only one name for me. Pusha T. It has sincerity. I bought the first Clipse album. The rap didn’t seem too contrived.”

Triple J gobbled up the Bugatti version with Pusha T. “There’s a nice twist to it, it happened with (Corey Hart cover) Sunglasses At Night too, it happens periodically, when a track is so blatantly out of the norm, so unapologetically different and it succeeds? By its very nature it becomes a bit of a poke in the eye. We live in a time when everything that succeeds seems like it was made in a laboratory. There’s a certain naive charm to Bugatti; it takes on that character. And y’know when you’ve got a big rapper on it (rapping) ‘Tiga mi amigo, we both follow that G-Code’ I get a kick out of it.”

“I write a lot to myself, not lyrics. It doesn’t happen so easily,” he says. “All my lyrics are simple but in a way it’s advertising, it’s a bit like copywriting. Quite a lot of thought goes into what ends up being an extremely simple phrase. No I don’t have notebooks full of things. Usually what happens is the lyrics almost always come after the music, the groove and the bassline and the drums are essential. I don’t have slogans on a notepad. It’s almost always: I do the track, I hear a tiny rhythmic something, the drums, some artefact, then I pick up on a rhythm I wanna sing and then something comes out. Basically, then I sleep on it and if it doesn’t make me cringe the next day…”

Fairly recently, Tiga told residentadvisor.net he was searching for a new sound and had nearly found it.

“When did I say that? I lose track of s— I say. It’s like I may have already found that sound and lost it. It happens constantly over the years. You have a sound, you’re excited by it, you don’t know exactly why but you lose some of the excitement about it. Then you wanna find something new. There are years where I’m captivated and quite into harder techno and then I only wanna play deeper house to electro or main room festival stuff. It’s always changing. My sound right now, it’s a work in progress. I’m bored by a lot of the stuff I here. The new deep house and tech house doesn’t do it for me. It leaves me empty. I’m trying to navigate something so that I can survive, it isn’t too far out that it loses people and it still satisfies me. A good example is Bugatti. I don’t know what to call it…” he says before being rudely interrupted by your scribe.

A woozy, off-kilter knee-knocking sleazy disco track?

“Ha. Sure. I guess it’s kind of electro house. I do know that when you have that sound you know it,” he says with a chipper grin.

Tiga contemplating what Iggy Azalea would have sounded like on Bugatti.
Source: HeraldSun

“The video is totally different, it was shot in Paris. I was there on set. I contributed some of the basic ideas. We went through so many treatments. I’m obsessed with the visuals. I can’t stand it when the music is some bizarre, like, adult soap opera to a house track,” he laughs.

“Like a weird vibe and then a guy starts breakdancing. I wanted it to be succinct and this guy (Helmi) was really good at that. The après ski idea was a childhood fetish from growing up with James Bond movies.”

Without ending the interview on a downer (as inappropriate as that term is), Tiga’s Gold Chain Bromeo was DJ Ajax (RIP) and when they toured together in 2005 they really bonded. “A downer is the last word I would use when talking about Ajax. He made everyone feel good, he was incredibly funny. I met a lot of Australians around that time, Gus and all the Bag Raiders guys, I became friends with all of them and I miss my friend Ajax, he would light up a room just by being in it.”

SEE: Oh Hello, 621 Ann St, Fortitude Valley. Brisbane. March 13. $ 25. oztix.com.au

Chinese Laundry, Sydney. March 14 (day rave). 111 Sussex St. $ 50-$ 60. chineselaundry.com.au

Prince of Wales, 29 Fitzroy St, St Kilda. March 14. $ 39.80. princebandroom.com.au

www.news.com.au/entertainment/music