Looking at images of Tiga I often feel a little disturbed by his appearance, but my, his music does excite my ears. After a brief mention of his Essential Mix for Radio One a couple of posts ago, here is a more in depth look at the magnificent beast itself.
This is a mix which seems to be aiming to achieve two main things. Firstly, to act as a sampler for Tiga's forthcoming Ciao! and also to act as a showcase for his label, Turbo Recordings (very soon to be the ripe old age of ten). That's not to say there isn't a variety of other record labels and artists featured within the two hours, in fact there's lots of that lovely stuff too.
There's four quite defined 'acts' in this mix, going roughly in half hour segments. The mix starts with some pretty four by four techno, but unsurprisingly of the more leftfield genre, perfectly handled and blended by Tiga. This continues into harder-edged electro, which then segues gradually into a more restrained section quite heavy on vocals. The final section winds down perfectly into some nu-disco, which very pleasingly is heavy on the cowbell.
A number of tracks in this mix are exclusives, not hard to tell as nearly every blogger hosting a download link has been hit by a stern notice from the ever ominous 'Web Sherriff'. Highlights amongst these exclusives are the Mr. Oizo remix of Tiga's Shoes, a track off the new Peaches album called Lose You (As remixed by Turbo's UK representative Matt Walsh), and a stunning and previously unheard Tiga track named Overtime, to be featured on his new album. The latter is the highlight of the mix in my opinion, managing to combine electro, techno and disco seamlessy in one track. Situated slap bang in the middle of the mix, it also seems to hint at what we can expect overall from the new Tiga release.
A few slightly older songs feature in the mix too, including The Proxy's excellent remix of Moby's I love To Move In Here, Yo Majesty's Club Action, LCD Soundsystem's minimal percussive masterpiece Too Much Love and the utterly amazing, warm and generally lovely Prince Language remix of MGMT's Electric Feel, arguably the finest bit of nu-disco from 2008. Quite impressively and controversially, he even includes the Uffie featuring Steroids by Mr. Oizo, and succeeds in making her extremely tired sounding vocals fresh again.
A brilliant mix all round, many of it's finest moments lurking within it's more secretive and underground moments. Certainly one of the best Essential Mixes in recent times, and showing the new players to the game (Herve, Marc Romboy and all the others, I'm talking to you) just how to do it. Well done Tiga.
No longer available on the iPlayer, you'll have to track it down yourself. Worry not however, the mix is lurking down the back of many metaphorical internet sofas. Check the tracklist HERE.
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