Artists take on pseudonyms for a multitude of reasons, but in Zach Saginaw’s case, those reasons run deeper than most. Zach records under the name Shigeto.
[audio:Shigeto – Ann Arbor Part 1 1.mp3] It’s his middle name; it’s also his grandfather’s name, a tribute to the Japanese branch of Zach’s family tree. Shigeto also means “to grow bigger”appropriate, given Zach’s premature birth-weight of less than a pound.
Today, Shigeto stands for Zach’s vividly beautiful electronic music. Beat-driven but given to richly textured sound design, rhythmically fractured but melodically sumptuous, Shigeto’s music is a bridge between the past and present, bringing the artist face to face with a creative legacy that spans decades.
Zach was brought up on a steady diet of Michigan-bred music, as his father spoon-fed him old Motown and jazz records by the crateload. Zach picked up the drums at an early age, spending much of his childhood playing in the Detroit/Ann Arbor music scene.
Shigeto | What We Held On To
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=vdu2rJlI9Pc
After nearly flunking out of high school—save for his music studies—Zach spent three years studying jazz at the New School in NYC and three more in London, where he began woodshedding, obsessed with learning electronic production. Soon enough, beats materialized, Zach moved to Brooklyn and took up the name Shigeto, and Zach’s peers began to take notice.
Zach’s body of work has grown over the last few years to the tune of several EPs on Moodgadget as Shigeto and with A Setting Sun, a pair of EPs under the alias Frank Omura (another family-name reference), and remixes for Worst Friends, Praveen & Benoit, Tycho, Mux Mool, Charles Trees, A Setting Sun, Beautiful Bells, Shlohmo, and more.
Shigeto | Escape From the Incubator
httpv://https://youtube.com/watch?v=1QXB6UAsuJs
The Semi-Circle EP will be his first release with Ghostly International; the full-length Full Circle was released in November of 2011. Semi-Circle is a fiercely independent work of art, nominally indebted to instrumental hip-hop but, like Zach, straddling many worlds at once. Cool shades of ambient music, stuttering early IDM, dubstep sub-bass, and jazz melodicism color Shigeto’s palette, which he wields with a painterly attention to detail.
Digital in Berlin highly recommended! We are giving away 2x 2 tickets for Shigeto. Just send a mail to win@digitalinberlin.de with “Shigeto” as the subject.
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Shigeto LIVE
Claes Strängberg Solo (Voice of immanu el)
Monday, 06.06.2011 | 21:00 CET
Monarch| Skalitzer Str. 134 | 10999 Berlin/Kreuzberg
http://ghostly.com | http://www.myspace.com/shigeto | Digital in Berlin 11+3 Interview with Shigeto
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