Tag: Forgetting is Violent (2025 Patrick Shiroishi album)

Patrick Shiroishi’s Ambient Noise Rock Piece “Mountain take that wing” is the Sound of Ancient Life Reclaiming Consciousness

Patrick Shiroishi, photo courtesy the artist

“Mountain take that wing” opens with a burst of high frequency sounds like the final emergency transmission from a starship falling from orbit. The glitches in that signal break its uniform, piercing quality and it crackles to give way to minimal saxophone warble and ghostly guitar, courtesy SUMAC’s Aaron Turner, streaming in the middle distance. The breathy saxophone notes that take the central spot in the mix overlayered by some animated saxophone and guitar that distorts abstractly like a sudden fissure opening to another dimension breaks into the more grounding sounds. But the guitar unleashed intones mournfully like a kaiju awakening from millennia of dormancy. The title provides a perfect image of an immense, ancient earth beast regaining full consciousness and indeed taking to flight, serenaded by angelic voices, provided by Gemma Thompson formerly of post-punk band Savages, in the last minute of the song. We hear the majestic creature crying out as it enjoys its liberty once again. Listen to “Mountain take that wing” on Spotify and follow Patrick Shiroishi on Instagram. His new album Forgetting is Violent is out now on vinyl, digital download and streaming via American Dreams.

Patrick Shiroishi’s Ambient Jazz Piece “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening” is a Meditation on the Ongoing, Daily Impact of the Legacy of Racism and Colonialism

Patrick Shiroishi, photo courtesy the artist

Patrick Shiroishi’s forthcoming new album Forgetting is Violent (out September 19, 2025 on vinyl, for download and streaming via American Dreams) promises more of his exploratory compositional technique. The track “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening” features Elizabeth Colour Wheel’s elemental vocalist otay::onii contributing a slow wailing chant alongside Shiroishi’s own spoken phrases to the layered, ritualistic drones paired with rhythms embodied in the iterative flow of organic textures. The sound of Shiroishi’s signature saxophone is transformed into characteristically nearly unrecognizable forms. One imagines this music being performed in a remote, Zen meditation retreat in a spot that continues to be a place of deep, internal, mystical experiences once your mind is freed of the distraction of the press and demands of commodified modern existence in the global capitalist dystopia. Once freed of that energy the recognition of one’s ongoing connection to eternal forces and patterns becomes obvious and this song seems to speak to the process of reconnecting with that which is ongoing underneath the illusion of atomized, monetized, contingent social reality. The album itself is a meditation on the legacy of racism and colonialism and the title resonates with the lingering and still very present impacts of such historical realities that permeate daily existence whether society collectively chooses to acknowledge them or not. Listen to “There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening” on Spotify and follow Patrick Shiroishi on Instagram.