Underground Dance and Electronica with Chris Honnery

Here’s one for the raving diary: a headline show from Montreal’s Tiga Sontag at The Imperial in Erskineville on Friday November 22. Given that two rounds of presale tickets have already sold out at the time of writing, you’d be foolish not to follow up that diary entry by actually procuring a ticket. Tiga is one of the more colorful characters in the dance world, but his caricatured public persona should not cloud his credentials as one of the most influential figures in dance music. What separates Tiga from the legions of pretenders is his ability to balance churning out quality main room and mainstream hits – who doesn’t have a soft spot for ‘You Gonna Want Me’, his cover of ‘Sunglasses At Night’ or his ‘Na Na Na Na Na Na’ remix of Tomas Andersson’s ‘Washing Up’? – with more experimental output (for example, ‘Man Hrdina’) that draws on acid, techno and broken beat influences. Somewhere between pop star and techno titan, Tiga is adept at churning out both ‘songs’ and ‘tracks’, with his output generally resonating with different factions of the clubbing community: house heads, technophiles, ravers – you all know the stereotypes and the apparent delineations between them. Emerging during the electroclash epoch, Tiga has remained a constant in the club sphere, whether as the curator of his label Turbo Recordings or a producer in his own right.

After a period of silence following his 2009 album Ciao, which featured guest spots from the likes of James Murphy and Scandinavian techno monoliths Jesper Dahlbäck and Jori Hulkkonen, Tiga has demonstrated he’s lost none of his production spark over the past year. Recent Tiga highlights have included the 100th release on Crosstown Rebels, ‘The Picture’ (which channeled Prince, blended with some serious dancefloor oomph), and his latest offering, ‘Let’s Go Dancing’, an instantly infectious collaboration with Audion that melds elements of each producer’s style to create one of the more successful club anthems of recent times. Tiga’s influence upon the club sphere is reflected in the list of producers who have remixed his music, which comprises everyone from Carl Craig, Matias Aguayo, Jamie Lidell and Trevor Jackson to Wagon Repair main man Mathew Jonson, Seth Troxler and Loco Dice. Such a diverse list of prominent producers as fans is evidence that, for all his self-puffery and (extremely entertaining) overstated displays of narcissism, Tiga can back up the pantomime act. So, in his own words, get down to his show at The Imperial and “revel, but at a respectful distance. I’m all about inclusion, as long as it doesn’t involve me in any way personally”.

And here’s a priceless interview with Tiga:

Astral People will launch a new series of events on Saturday October 12 with a double billing comprised of UK artists Sigha and Shifted, who will be playing back-to-back for over five hours at the Civic Underground. Sigha is the nom de plume of James Shaw, who curates his own label, Our Circula Sound, and makes tracks that draw on techno, dubstep and ambient influences, blurring any distinction between the abstract and the dancefloor. The first producer to commit exclusively to producing hard-line techno on Hotflush Recordings, Sigha released his debut album, Living With Ghosts, on Scuba’s label last November. Meanwhile, Shifted has established himself in techno circles by releasing his first couple of EPs on Luke Slater’s esteemed Mote Evolver imprint, through which he also released his debut LP, Crossed Paths. Sigha and Shifted have recently teamed up to release their first EP together, Model 001, under the moniker of A Model Authority, which was released through the pair’s new label of the same name. The Model Authority collaboration was apparently “born out of the desire to rise above the very modern mediocrity and complacency that surrounds us. A stamp of hard-lined ideals in a pragmatic world, a new order, a new beginning and a better way of living”. Quite a serious mission statement should come as little surprise to anyone familiar with each of the respective producers’ uncompromising output. You have your chance to experience the pair melding their esoteric influences with pitch black techno first hand on arguably the best soundsystem in Sydney in a few weeks’ time, with the D&D DJs warming things up beforehand.

Looking Deeper

Saturday September 28

Peter Van Hoesen

The Abercrombie

Saturday October 12

Sigha & Shifted

The Civic Underground

Saturday October 26

Coma

The Abercrombie

Friday November 22

Tiga

The Imperial

Deep Impressions: electronica manifesto and occasional club brand. Contact through [email protected]

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