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Music

Tiga Touches Your Life in Ways You'll Never Fully Understand

Update: Tiga has shared part two of his 'Origins' video interview about the making of 'No Fantasy Required.'

Inscrutability is part of veteran Montreal producer Tiga's thing. There's a tricky, off-kilter suaveness in a lot of his tracks—like album single "Bugatti," where he confidently, performatively, and ever-so-slightly awkwardly brags about the ultra expensive car he drives—that leaves you with more questions than answers about the man behind the music.

That's why, upon first glimpse, this cheeky, behind-the-scenes interview made for his latest album, No Fantasy Required, is a welcome opportunity to really get to know Tiga Sontag's inner life. It's been seven years since his last album, (Ciao!) so there must be some kind of story behind the new one, out on Ninja Tune sublabel Counter Records.

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Unsurprisingly, though, it's a choreographed showcase of a deadpan caricature of an eccentric celebrity recluse. Tiga talks about the apps he's developing (such as Instant Fireman), the Anna Wintour-style secret signals he uses to communicate with his assistants (a stroke of the chin, for example, means "make this Belgian idiot a star"), and how he would rate on a scale of one to 10 EDM (8), Kanye West (2), and himself (9.5). He even mentions all the ridiculously-titled songs—"Tiga Makes You Dance All Night," "Tiga 2014," "Tiga Keep Dancing"—he had to leave off his album. If you're confused, that's definitely not a mistake; as he says in the video: "I'll touch your life in ways you'll never fully understand."

Part two of the interview sees the artist continue to insert odd tales into his biography, this time taking his interlocutor to the Murray Hill/King George Park and claiming that it was a formative space for him as a child. Strolling through a snow-laden landscape, he recounts his childhood love of Sid Vicious, explains that he sold his soul for dance music culture like Robert Johnson, and recalls that one time he saved his friend David's life from skinheads. There's no coherent narrative arc to all the information he throws at the viewer, and part of the time it feels like he's making it up on the spot.

Maybe it's better this way, though—the fiction he weaves might just tell us more about him than any straightforward biography could. It's possible that the real answers to questions like, "Why did it take seven years to make this album?" might not be as interesting as the kinds of playful, weird, or kind of uncomfortable performances he wants to bring to his work.

"Join me on a journey into the heart of the one-man hive mind that propels the Holy Tigan Empire ever forward into a future I can't wait to share with all y'all," Tiga told THUMP of the video. "Life is simply a series of desks and the work you put in when you're at them. So let's roll up each other's sleeves and get down to business."

Tiga's No Fantasy Required is out now on Counter Records.