Sigha – 'Living With Ghosts' review
Sigha (pronounced ‘Sire’, or James Shaw to those who matter) is a Berlin-based London-born producer who, on the strength his debut record, is not afraid of auditory confrontation. Split broadly into three sections, Living With Ghosts delivers thunderous, heads-down but also subtly intricate techno that mesmerises as much as it annihilates, offering washes of white noise and acid-flecked burbles to offset the considerable underpinning aggression.
Neatly dividing the sections are shorter ambient tracks which not only offer a bleak, surprisingly musical foil to the sturm und drang surrounding them, but also pace the record expertly – and at 68 minutes (and, in the main, relentlessly heavy) that pacing is essential.
Living With Ghosts is undeniably an exercise in both stamina and commitment, but it is also an absorbing, uncompromising and frequently astonishing chunk of forward-thinking electronica that both begs for and deserves attention.
9/10
