Sigha

Initially rooted in shoegaze-inspired indie ensembles, British producer and DJ James Shaw, known professionally as Sigha, later charted a path across post-dubstep and techno. After training on guitar at music college, he first encountered electronic sounds during a London warehouse party, an encounter that prompted him to begin solo production work. Immersed in the city’s expanding dubstep community and holding a part-time position at the BM Soho record store, Shaw fused dubstep’s foundational rhythms with techno’s spacious textures, drawing additional impetus from his longstanding admiration for pioneering noise and shoegaze acts such as My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth.

In 2009 he joined the roster of Hotflush Recordings, the label home to Joy Orbison, Mount Kimbie, and owner Scuba, issuing his first 12-inch “Rawww” that year along with the follow-ups “On the Strip” and “Bruised.” A dedicated vinyl collector, Shaw launched his own vinyl-only imprint, Our Circula Sound, in 2010; its inaugural release, Early Morning Lights, included a remix by German techno legend Marcel Dettmann and marked his shift toward a more pronounced techno orientation. His relocation to Berlin in 2011 coincided with a series of further outings on Hotflush, Blueprint, and Our Circula Sound. Early the next year he delivered the EP Abstractions I-IV, a blend of drone-informed techno and atmospheric ambience that foreshadowed his debut album, Living with Ghosts, which appeared at the close of 2012. Subsequent singles and EPs on Avian and Token reflected his continued movement into darker, more experimental terrain, culminating in the 2017 full-length Metabolism, issued on Token.