Tiga's Delirious 'No Fantasy Required' LP Is Streaming in Full

When techno auteur Tiga drops a new album, you know what to expect — expertly braided beats, neon-tinged electro bleeps, and just enough winking humor to satisfy your craving for something more than generic DJ tools. It's a potent combination that the Montreal native has refined further over the course of three albums and a 15-year-long career that started with his 2001 breakout single, a brash cover of Corey Hart's "Sunglasses At Night" that helped launch a thousand electroclash compilations.

Tomorrow, March 4, the producer and singer born Tiga James Sontag will release his latest full-length collection No Fantasy Required, and there's no purer distillation of the glitter and grit that he's made over the course of the last decade and a half. That spirit of dance music delivered with a smirk is the common thread throughout all of Tiga's catalog, and No Fantasy Required upholds this trend.

The hilarious mantras on "3 Rules"—including "Never touch your own d***" (censorship his)—are examples of the gleeful wit he always demonstrates and the album version of "Bugatti," a 2014 single originally featuring Pusha T, strips away the guest verse in favor of beautifully chintzy instrumental work. It's smiling faux-fabolousness along the lines of what Miss Kittin and The Hacker were doing back in the early 00s, but reimagined by a producer whose penchant for backbending beats grows stronger with each successive release.

It's not all goofy antics though, as Tiga demonstrates his more serious techno side on cuts with frequent collaborators Matthew Dear and Jake Shears, as well as newer allies Hudson Mohawke and Paranoid London, all of whom share his obsession with cleverly clipped and snipped vocal takes. Elsewhere, his habit of brashly borrowing from across the musical spectrum is made apparent on "Plush," which plays like a skeevy reimagining of Kraftwerk's digi-funk track "Home Computer."

Playful twists like these that give breath and life to the decades of house and techno tropes that he tosses around at will. His sound is singular in its brevity and wit, but comforting in its familiarity, and that makes No Fantasy Required worth your immediate attention. Listen to the record in full in advance of its March 4 release, right here.