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.
Chester Raj Anand has always been a precocious creative soul. At the age of six, he discovered music production when his older brother showed him software like ACID and Fruity Loops. That knowledge coalesced with a background in piano, keyboards, and jazz percussion—as well as a fascination with “really raw, scary Aphex Twin” and the “lavish creative energy of the ‘90s”—setting Anand on his path to becoming the producer we know as Lord RAJA.
