Label of the Month: Turbo Recordings

It’s kind of a big deal when a record label celebrates 25 years around the sun. It means that the imprint has withstood seismic changes in the music industry, from trends to new technology, namely social media. But if a label’s longevity depends on succumbing to trends or using social media in the most unoriginal way possible, Turbo Recordings is not that label. 

In the last quarter of a century, the imprint has remained authentic through several means. It has a distinct tone of voice, imbued with humour and a touch of sarcasm. Looking at the label’s stacked compilation Turbo 25, which came out last year, the press release includes a sentence about how, at the tail-end of 2022, label founder Tiga “sent out an urgent missive to friends and collaborators across the globe”, which read as:

“SEND ME ONE AWESOME TRACK, AND LET'S GET RICH BABYCAKES. SEND ME FILLER AND YOUR PERSONAL CONTACT INFO GOES STRAIGHT INTO THE TURBO DISCORD SO YOU CAN ‘CONNECT’ WITH OUR FANS.”

The result arrived a year later in the form of 25 tracks from longrunning Turbo heads, like Proxy, The Hacker, and Sascha Funke, and artists who have emerged in more recent years, like MANT, Nikki Nair, and DJ TRENCHCOAT. The release embodied the multi-faceted sound of Turbo, cross-pollinating techno, electroclash, electro, house, and pop, and Tiga himself featured too, via collaborations with Jori Hulkkonen and Zombie Nation (the latter under the alias of ZZT). The compilation also included remixes of Tiga’s previous work, like Gesloten Cirkel’s remix of “Easy” and Disfreq’s remix of “Louder than a Bomb,” which is a Tiga-fied cover of Public Enemy’s eponymous track from 1998.

Turbo Recordings has a very specific approach to artwork too. Incorporating minimal and maximal aesthetics, from the photo of a shocked Dale Cooper on Tiga’s EP Stay Cool (designed during Tiga’s Twin Peaks phase) to the sinister shot of a burning car on his EP Easy, it’s clear that the Canadian artist cares about the visual direction of his label, which, as he explains later, is to his detriment.

In addition to the compilation, Tiga curated a series of Turbo25 parties at Stereo in Montréal throughout 2023, further fuelling the label’s birthday celebrations. On separate occasions, Tiga played B2B with Four Tet and Hector Oaks, while headliners The Blessed Madonna, Perel, Mike Servito, and Seth Troxler also played across the series.

Now we’re in 2024, and the dust has yet to settle and probably won’t ever settle. Turbo has since released a slew of records like Anastasia Kristensen’s EP Moments of Inertia, Gregor Tresher & Sven Väth’s two-tracker Flashback, plus its remix edition. There’s also a remix record from Tiga & Hudson Mohawke feat. Channel Tres comprising remixes from Honey Dijon, Mr. G. and Johnny Aux (of Paranoid London).

These are just a handful of releases from the catalogue, which has accumulated over 300 records. Throughout its lengthy tenure, the label has launched the careers of Gesaffelstein, Charlotte De Witte, Duke Dumont, Azari & III, and Chromeo and garnered a reputation worldwide for its high-quality, genre-hopping sounds.

Label founder Tiga started Turbo Recordings in Montréal in 1998; a “whole different world,” he tells us over Zoom. But his motivation to start a label was “pretty simple,” despite already DJing and running a nightclub and record store, both of which he owned.

“I had a lot of projects on the go, but I wanted something a little bit more creative and a little bit more connected to other artists,” he explains. “Like, I wanted to work with cool people, creative people, and at that time, I was just in Montréal, and I had a little bit of an international network — the beginning of one — but not really. So, a label was really a way to get my foot in the door creatively with a lot of other artists. And I wanted to make record covers. I wanted to make records. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to join the tradition that I liked of designing record sleeves and just working with cool people.”

Tiga’s desire to design record sleeves hasn’t wavered, but it’s usually a “bottleneck” at the label, requiring a lot of “time, money and, and…yeah, stress.” This is partly due to Tiga’s musical roots in the '80s, when artwork mattered more than it might today. “It was really, really important, you know, this thing you were going to hold in your hand,” he recalls. “And it was a fun thing to do. I’ve never really been able to shake it, even though it doesn’t really mean much anymore. I mean, if you’re streaming, [the sleeve] is a tiny little picture. Nobody really cares. I mean, I really don’t believe people buy music anymore based on the record cover, whereas they used to, and I’ve had a very, very, very hard time letting that go; it still means something to me.”

From day one, the Canadian producer and DJ knew his intentions with Turbo Recordings — to meet people and make things. He has always taken this intention seriously, as conveyed by the diversity of artists who have released on Turbo, from DMX Krew to Plastikman & Chilly Gonzales. “Whereas, if you know, if your intention from the beginning is ‘I want to sell a million records’ or ‘I want this to be a vanity project so I can get more shows,’ or whatever that intention is, it probably ends up kind of coming across in the end, whether you want it to or not,” he adds.

While Tiga takes his intention seriously and is well aware of the responsibility of potentially launching an artist’s career, humour and having a good sense of humour are just as integral to the label, and this bleeds into the trademark tone of Turbo.

Around 2005, just as Turbo was beginning to take off, Tiga spent a lot of time in his basement studio in Montréal. It was here that he would get stoned and start writing a few sentences. Having slid “secret messages in the spines of [Turbo] records” already, he noticed a lack of written communication on other records at the time. So he decided to “create stories” alongside his friend, and the two became co-writers. “Then we started writing a lot of stuff, like for my own career. We did fake interviews, we did fake press kits. Just a lot of fake everything, you know? I really, really, really, really like the idea of kind of bullshitting people; it’s just fun. It’s really just fun. That’s what it comes down to. It’s fun.”

Regarding A&R, there are two categories of artists: those that Tiga personally finds, like Duke Dumont, and those initiated by the Turbo staff, like Charlotte De Witte. As long as Tiga “kind of likes” the music and spots long-term potential in the artist, it’s the right fit for Turbo.

If it’s just Tiga signing the music, the process begins with hearing a track he likes, whether in a club or elsewhere, followed by contacting the artist through email or having a conversation in the club itself. He works fast and isn’t shy about telling an artist he likes their work. It starts with “a little music conversation” followed by a “little friendship.” Then, he hands the following stages to the label manager. “And then I’ll go through tracks,” he says. “And I’m quite hands-on with track selection, sometimes with track sequence, but not really.”

Giving feedback can be fundamental to the A&R process, but it can be a sensitive subject. However, considering Tiga’s storied career spanning 33 years, artists trust him. “Real A&R and the ability to be critical in a good way is really delicate,” he says. “It’s an art. You know, it’s not easy…the way I see it is like, I try to just be honest with people — if I’m talking to you in the first place, I think there’s potential, and I like you. So, let’s start with that as a base to build your confidence. I wouldn’t be talking to you if I didn’t think you were good. And then, if I say, ‘You know what, this could be better?’ Well, it’s because I really believe in you. I think you can do better, and that’s it.”

“It’s really just about the music for me, I’m really not particularly concerned with sales or what people look like, and I think people get that from me and my music as well,” he continues. “Like, I think people trust me that there isn’t that much bullshit.”

We’re curious to know if he predicts how well a record will go or if he’s ever felt surprised at a record falling flat. In short, both scenarios happen, but over the years, he has started to understand how his own taste can match — or mismatch – with that of the “outside world.” The best outcome tends to be when the two tastes align. “So for example, in my own career, something like “Bugatti” was a great example where I thought it was incredible and weird and special,” he says. “And generally, that’s exactly what the whole world thought, like everyone loved it and that was a perfect match.”

But sometimes, the taste of the outside world isn’t the same as what’s going on at Turbo HQ (which has operated remotely since the pandemic). He remembers when he first released music by Scottish duo Clouds, beginning with their EP Optic in 2012. “I thought, and think, they were incredible,” he says. “They were cutting edge, they were techno, but they had a sense of humour. They’re just amazing guys, amazing. And [the records] never did what [they] should have done. But in that case, it was just too early. It was hard techno before hard techno was such a mainstream thing.”

But still, it all “kind of averages out in the end”. At the time of writing, Tiga predicts the response to the next record on Turbo: Reznik’s remix of “Silence of Love” ft. Jesse Boykins III by Tiga & Hudson Mohawke. While he initially “didn’t freak out” about the track, he knows “it’s going to be a huge record.” In fact, Keinemusik played it recently, and the response looked promising.

More upcoming releases include an album from Tiga and remixes of Tiga and Hudson Mohawke’s album “L'Ecstasy”, featuring Reznik, Quelza, Keepsakes, DJ Holographic and Audion, and new music from Dense & Pika, Confidential Recipe and Architectural.

Tiga is also keen to support more Montréal-based talents, through running events and releasing music from local names, which is something he didn’t focus on too much in the past. “But there’s a pretty booming scene here now, especially for techno,” he says, citing artists like Priori, Ambien Baby and Lis Dalton. “I used to not really not give a shit about ‘local’ whatever, but it’s different now because I’m around home more, and there’s some really, really good people here.”

26 years deep, what motivates Tiga to keep running Turbo Recordings? “There’s a very specific feeling when you find great music,” he answers. “I think it’s a feeling everyone knows; it’s like an excitement.” Maintaining the momentum of Turbo is another motivation, but ultimately, it’s down to the excitement of finding something new. “Because that, for me, is the seed that everything else comes from. Everything. Studio ideas come from that, the desire to DJ comes from that, the desire to present that to people like, ‘check this out.”’

It’s these discoveries that make Tiga proud of Turbo Recordings. “Like the first Gesaffelstein record or the first Proxy records. I remember hearing the first Proxy records and being like, ‘holy shit, what is this?’ And me and my brother and my friends, we were all so excited. [Proxy] was this guy from the middle of nowhere in Russia. But you have the ability to take that and help that person and to make the whole thing grow. And that’s really, really, really cool.”