Shigeto - What We Held Onto

ARTIST: Shigeto
ALBUM TITLE: What We Held On To EP
LABEL: Ghostly International / Moodgadget
RELEASE DATE: Free giveaway on July 20, 2010

TRACKLIST:

01. Spring Textures
02. After She Smokes
03. Bitter Sweet
04. What We Held On To
05. Grandma’s Words / Rise Out Of The Stone

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 . 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.

Shigeto’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, and remixes for Shlohmo, Worst Friends, Praveen & Benoit, Tycho, Mux Mool, Charles Trees, A Setting Sun, Beautiful Bells, and more.

Both simpler and heavier than its predecessor and displaying a new blown-speaker intensity, Shigeto’s free What We Held On To EP builds a sonic bridge between his recent Semi-Circle EP and the upcoming Full Circle full-length. What We Held On To is the latest installment in Shigeto’s ongoing treatise on his family’s troubled history, as well as a free taste of what’s to come from the prolific Brooklyn producer.

 --p.a.t.t.