Shigeto

Detroit's Shigeto delivers effervescent instrumental hip-hop with a dubstep influence on debut record Full Circle. With two EPs of solo material released by Ghostly International (Semi Circle and What We Held On To), Full Circle completes the artist's musical reflection (begun on the EPs) of his Japanese grandmother's escape from a U.S. internment camp. The songs are no less than visionary, reminding us of jazz concepts where anything goes if it sounds harmonious. On Full Circle, Shigeto creates sample-based hip-hop with a personal touch. The artist spent four years personally recording variant noises of life then activating these sounds as music. Using calming recordings from family dinners to children to monks singing, Shigeto moulds them ever so subtly into songs, creating an aura of the everyday that's hard to distinguish. "Ann Arbor" (parts one and two) demonstrates the aforementioned dubstep influence; Shigeto is successful synthesizing heavy bass and dub-y space sounds into calmly ambient audio. Full Circle represents Shigeto's firm planting of roots in the Ghostly International family, a partnership that will benefit both.