- Tiga is a lot of things—a genre ironist, a gender jockey, a genius debatably—but subtle he is not. On his latest, Ciao!, he waxes obvious about information overload "All I feel is in this data stream / I see the eyes in the computer screen /Misinformation is surrounding me / It brings me down, I'm on my knees"—but the big joke is that song itself ("Beep Beep Beep") is frenetically overproduced mess of Purple One invocations, Basement Jaxx snipes and inch-deep pop profundity.
Enter Loco Dice with a dub that doesn't even deliver anything close to the song's hook until about six minutes deep into the cut. A persistent little string flick and some mechanically feisty bongos building to Tiga himself exhaling are all that remain. Now, I love taking something overdone and underdoing it for effect—but this is the remix equivalent of Garfield Minus Garfield.
Parisian mnml producer Kaine goes the opposite route—instead of dialing back Tiga's enthusiasm—he organizes it. What was funky and goofy on the original becomes all New Romantic lush and dark. Tiga James Sontag's "beep-beep-beep" refrain stops being a reminder of technological interruption and starts to be the sexy pulse of the cyborg nightlife. The message is lost, but who cares? This B bangs.
Rounding out the trifecta is Chicken Lips' Andy Meechan pumping up the bass as The Emperor Machine. The third remix foregrounds the low-end and buries Tiga under layers of Hammond sediment and synth detritus. The original hook is completely replaced with an ornate little Kraftwerk confection that vibrates like taut bungee cords. Again, little to do with the original, but happily interesting in its own right. Points for the tribal drum breakdown three-quarters through.
Tiga is a man who knows his '80s and, likewise, these remixes taken as a whole honor that ethos. If the original is a happily disorganized Linklater movie of half-realized influences and references, each subsequent take pulls out a thread and weaves its own thing with it. Loco Dice's remix is Down By Law, Kaine channeled Less Than Zero and the Emperor Machine took a piss-take at The Last Starfighter. If those analogies mean anything to you, you should probably grab this release pronto.
Tracklist A1 Beep Beep Beep (Loco Dice Dub)
B1 Beep Beep Beep (Kaine Remix)
B2 Beep Beep Beep (Emperor Machine Dub)