As a mad net-surfer I discovered Tigersushi a while ago, with its stylistic little village to explore and iconic “le tigre”. It’s been a favourite website ever since, often revisited. It was thus with great pleasure that I chatted to Parisian Charles Hagelsteen, co-founder of the site, on the launch of Tigersushi’s first compilation CD, “More G.D.M.” (More Godamm Music).

Visit the Tigersushi site and you see there is a lot going down there. But exactly what is Tigersushi- a record label, a record shop or a website? Charles explains, “In general it is only an identity we use to do whatever we wish to do around music. Since we are lazy tigers, so far we have only done a record label, a website and some parties. We don’t really know what is going to be next. Maybe we will have some new ideas, and use them as Tigersushi, maybe not. We don’t have a day to day view of what we should do actually. We don’t have a long term view for now. There is no master plan.” That makes a change in today’s scheme of things, particularly in the age of e-commerce. I counter that this flexibility and lack of plans is exciting because Tigersushi could become anything. “Yeah, apart from a drug dealer or weapons manufacturer,” Charles replies cheekily, opting out on the unpopular career paths.

Tigersushi, the website, has been around for one year, though Charles and his partners Joachim and Julian have been working on it for two years. The record label aspect of Tigersushi is much younger, having been operational for only eight months, the first release (Cluster vs John Tejada) coming out in April 2002. The label has its fourth 12” slated for release this month.

The next step for Tigersushi has been the leap from vinyl to CD. I ask Charles what was the idea behind the CD? “It was a long process. We had the website and we had to promote the website and that was the first way that we looked at it. Maybe we should release some music, and since part of the website is old music and part is new, we thought maybe we could expose this angle to people so that maybe people who don’t know us, or don’t go online, at least know us in the record shops. It was a way to reach music fans, people that we know are already into music. And we wanted it to reflect the website, maybe not in the beginning, but to reflect what the label is like. So that’s why there is this historic angle with the reissues. And also we decided to ask artists that we like on the website like Maurice Fulton and Morgan Geist (of Metro Area), John Tejada, people that were our heroes at the time to contribute. But now the label has been picking up very fast, so now it’s more the label dragging the website and the website is dragging the label.”

I confess to being in the second category, that of someone surprised to see the 12” of Tigersushi’s third release, Gina X vs Metro Area, on the shelf of my local techno record store. Charles explains “I’m sure there are people who buy music and don’t care about websites, and people who care about websites and not the records we do. The idea was that we would be able to navigate between time, space, and places to show what is electronic music, and what it has been about. We kept on writing histories and reviews about music and things like Paradise Garage, New York, Palace in Paris, Berlin, all the club rock scene and I think that part of it is the journalistic experience in a way. You have all the reissues (such as Gina X and Cluster) and we are seeking to expose what was the best of each era. The new part is more of a record label experience with new tracks that are vibing off their counterparts, the older music.”

Looking at the website there is a diversity of sounds covered from electro to tech, funk, and old to new. So does Tigersushi, the record label, have a characteristic sound I ask Charles? “We used to say that Tigersushi is “music for the small majority that listens”. That’s a Moodyman quote, the guy from Detroit. He says it on one of his records. “I don’t make music for the masses to dance to, I make it for the small majority that listens.” We have this view of what is good quality music, and whenever it’s good even if it’s house music, techno music, electronica, electro music, breakbeat, jungle, whatever is good we want to put out. We don’t have a restriction on what we should sound like, but then I think what people perceive is only the combination of our music sensibilities. The people behind the record label are what make the sounds signature.”

From its humble beginnings as a music based website Tigersushi is turning into a fully fledged record label, with the next project scheduled for release in February. “It is going to be a mix CD around clubs n parties. And then we have signed a project that will be produced by Maurice Fulton. An artist called Miu will be singing and producing. But it’s now quite mysterious, so we’d rather keep quiet about it. It’s going to be very interesting stuff” Charles promises.

More G.D.M. is available now in record stores, and features all the tracks previously released by Tigersushi on vinyl and 5 new bonus tracks.