Tiga - No Fantasy Required (2016)

The Tiga album I picked in my Top 25 was "Sexor". At the time that was his only album, but follow up album "Ciao" came out shortly afterwards. Then in 2016 came "No Fantasy Required".

At the end of 2015 Tiga played what I believe was his first live gig (as opposed to DJing) at Koko and I went to see that. He had new tunes such as "Bugatti" and "Plush" which were up on YouTube.

It was around 3 months later that this album came out. Despite listening to those new tunes on YouTube and going to see him in concert so close to the album coming out, this is actually the first time I've listened to the album.

Generally speaking I'm not a fan of vocals in dance music but Tiga is an exception to that rule. He's not much of a singer but he adds a bit of humour and silliness to it such as "girl comes up to me and says what do you drive and I say Bugatti".

Tiga has a sort of signature sound but at the same time you could probably identify which album each individual track is from. It's an enjoyable album and it's a shame we've not had more live shows off the back of it. He still plays the DJ circuit and plays at clubs in London every now and then but I'm too old to be going to those these days.

 

Last 10 Years

Yesterdays post about Fenech-Soler brought back memories of other music I was listening to when I first discovered them. Basically I didn't think I was old enough to reach the 'better in the old days' stage of my life and made an effort to keep my music tastes current.

One thing I did was pick my 25 favourite albums. It was a very biased list favouring the more recent albums though, 17 of them were from the 21st century and the other 8 were from the 90s. It also included an album which had only just come out at the time.

Nowadays I'm at a point where I'm not even up to date with a lot of artists I've liked in years gone by. Some went to to make some truly dreadful music and others I just forgot about. I do sometimes seek out new music from an artist if I'm going to see them in concert, but many don't really bother making new music anymore and stick to the classics.

It got me thinking, what albums have the 25 artists of those albums I picked released in the last 10 years. Well here's the answer:

2 Many DJs - No albums

Norman Jay - 2 albums: Skank & Boogie (2015), Mister Good Times (2017)

Portishead - No albums

Massive Attack - No albums

High Contrast - 2 albums: Night Gallery (2017), Notes from the Underground (2020)

Plump DJs - No albums

Jacques Lu Cont - No albums

Erol Alkan - 1 album: Fabriclive 77 (2014)

Spiritcatcher - No albums

Various Artists - N/A

DJ Shadow - 2 albums: The Mountain Will Fall (2016), Our Pathetic Age (2019)

Tiga - 1 album: No Fantasy Required  (2016)

Air - No albums

Fatboy Slim - No albums

Sander Kleinenberg - No albums

Snoop Dogg - 6 albums: Bush (2015), Coolaid (2016), Neva Left (2017), Bible of Love (2018), I Wanna Thank Me (2019), From tha Streets 2 tha Suites (2021), BODR (2022)

Jurassic 5 - No albums

Kruder & Dorfmeister - 1 album: Johnson (2022)

Zero 7 - No albums

Mylo - No albums

Digitalism - 2 albums: Mirage (2016), JPEG (2019)

Underworld - 2 albums: Barbara Barbara, We Face a Shining Future (2016), Drift Series 1 (2019)

LCD Soundsystem - 1 album: American Dream (2017)

London Elektricity - 2 albums: Are We There Yet? (2015), Building Better Worlds (2019)

Propellerheads - No albums

Just 11 of the artists have released an album in the last 10 years and only 3 of them have released one in the decade so far. Only Snoop Dogg has been prolific with none of the others managing more than 2 albums in a decade.

This leads to another question, are these albums any good?

Just one way to find out. I'm going to give each of those albums a listen and post what I think of them here.

My 25 Favourite Albums: Tiga - Sexor

The next in this series is the debut album for Tiga. It was a bit odd that this was his debut album given he'd been around a while by the time it came out, but then again there are plenty of dance music DJs who don't ever release studio albums so maybe not that strange.

Tiga first hit the big time in 2002 with "Sunglasses At Night", still perhaps his best known tune to date. Then came his dance version of "Hot In Herre" which didn't come out that long after the Nelly version and featured Jake Shears of Scissor Sisters at a time before they had their first UK hit. Neither of these tunes were on the album, but given how old these were by this point it's understandable.

The earliest release to make the album was "Pleasure From The Bass" which came out in 2004. Then there was "Louder Than a Bomb", followed by "You Gonna Want Me" which featured a now well known Jake Shears. Also coming out prior to the album was "Good As Gold".

By the time I bought the album, he'd also released "(Far From) Home" and "3 Weeks". The main reason I bought the album was for "(Far From) Home" as it's worth buying for that track alone. Furthermore there is also a remix on the album called "(Far From) Home (The Speed Of Sexor Reprise)".

With 6 tracks that I already knew and liked plus a remix of one of them, what else was on the album?

Well there are 14 tracks in total, 2 of which are interludes (The opening track "Welcome To Planet Sexor" and "Who's That?"). Then we have 3 covers, "Louder Than A Bomb" by Public Enemy, "Down In It" by Nine Inch Nails and "Burning Down The House" by Talking Heads.

The remaining 2 tracks are "The Ballad Of Sexor" and "Brothers", the latter containing the hidden track "Sir Sir Sir".

When I bought it I couldn't stop listening to it. What makes it so great? I've no idea to be honest, it's simply an album I love to listen to.