Montreal DJ/producer Tiga doesn't seem particularly interested in the single-single-comp-album-remix-etc. battle plan of your average electronic artist/producer. Sexor, released in 2006, was his first proper album after seven years of DJ mixes and intermittently brilliant cover tracks. Ciao! once again features Soulwax and Jesper Dahlback on production duties, but it adds James Murphy and Jason "Gonzales" Beck to the mix, resulting in a more varied album that rarely requires Tiga's (improving) sing/talk voice to carry too much weight.
Tiga may not have yet figured out the LP format: the sequencing of Ciao!, which front-loads six bangers before its gauzier second half, is divisive to the point of distraction. But Ciao! also feels more lived-in than 2006's Sexor, which relied on the misguided recurrence of "Planet Sexor" and several covers-- long a staple of Tiga's catalog-- to form a song cycle. Ciao! has its silly moments-- I once walked cross-room to my iPod muttering "please don't be singing 'Sex O'Clock'"; "Shoes" might actually owe a debt to Liam Kyle Sullivan's goof of the same name-- but they at least advance the image of Tiga as a Prince-indebted persona capable, at any given moment, of extreme silliness, eroticism, or wistfulness.
More importantly, Tiga establishes themes on Ciao! of far greater consequence than "there is a mythical sex planet." Ciao! sort of covers a lot of ground, but basically it's a reflection on music and companionship, moving from the emptiness/fulfillment of luxury and sex to holy-shit-the-sun's-up, club-closing malaise. The end-of-album reflection-epic sums it up best: "Love don't dance here anymore/ Found a new place to go."
Enough of the AP English essay, though: if you're here, it's for Tiga's penchant for busty electro-bangers, and Ciao! provides plenty of dancefloor fodder. (A track like "Beep Beep Beep", which rails against the anonymity of modern life before taking comfort in a lover, probably contains too much plot and sentiment for a Tiga song anyhow). "What You Need" stands as the best of the album's flossy first half, beginning with a riotous, overloaded squelch and pushing through nearly six minutes of burly dancefloor mash. "Luxury" pans a quick, nasal rhythm around a surprisingly virtuoistic keyboard solo. A low-slung, heavily filtered bass plows the way for "Mind Dimension", as buzzy and aggressive as anything Crystal Castles muster.
The second half of Ciao! features less bodyrock, but its relatively soothed tones and thrumming beats are a surprising fit for Tiga. "Turn the Night On", the most "proper" pop track Tiga's ever been involved in, juxtaposes rippling arpeggios with clean piano and Tiga's restrained vocals: "So many choices in the world/ So many boys, so many girls... It's harder than you think." The whole package sounds a little like an adenoidal Junior Boys song, or maybe an early-80s Lou Reed LP sped to 45 rpm. "Gentle Giant", the only song to tack both a writing and a producing credit on James Murphy (he also produced "Sex O'Clock"), massages loping chords and a hollow, looping electronic drum into what is, by some measure, Tiga's most nakedly heartfelt song: "Youth don't fail me now/ I need just one last favor/ One song and another dance to let me feel in love tonight."
The 10-plus minute coda "Love Don't Dance Here Anymore" threatens tedium with its white-piano balladry before a pulse-quickening sequencer and a tapping tom rechart the song's course. It's a fittingly epic closer for an album, perhaps the surest sign yet that Tiga's interested in crafting cohesive statements, and not just a series of novelties (as fun as Sexor was, there was little evidence that it was more than a diversion from Tiga's singles and deck-work). Tiga's still not a dancefloor chameleon like Basement Jaxx and he's not yet as pop-oriented and clever as say, the Pet Shop Boys, but Ciao! at least sees him glancing in those directions.
