In the music video for Patrick Shiroishi’s “how will we get back to life again?” directed by Nancy Kwon we see a cloudscape of whites, shades of gray and blue sky in the elegant, flowing dynamism of weather patterns. It parallels Shiroishi’s composition of his new album I was too young to hear silence (which dropped November 10, 2023 on streaming, digital and vinyl) in which he employs the Japanese concept of Ma or negative space or the spaces in between as a positive entity rather than simple absence, giving the composition an effective balance. Recording the album with his signature saxophone, a glockenspiel, two microphones and a Zoom digital recorder in a parking structure below a hot pot restaurant in Monterey Park around 1:30 am, Shiroishi made use of the natural reverb to assemble a truly unique type of ambient album. We hear the ebb and flow of his improvisational and intuitive rhythms and textures across the record and for “how will we get back to life again?” in particular the a kind of natural distortion that amplifies an expression of the interactions between clouds and how haunting and moving simply observing the eternal movements of natural patterns largely beyond our ability to control with its endless variations and which offer no inherent meaning the way a work of art might. But that emotional resonance in witnessing these phenomena Shiroishi seems to capture so articulately though not bearing witness to these events in the video in real time making the pairing inspired in how one form of art can find a cognate in another through the power of imagination. Fans of Philip Glass’s collaborations with Godfrey Reggio and Ron Fricke will appreciate what Shiroishi has accomplished here. Watch the video for “how will we get back to life again?” on YouTube and follow Patrick Shiroishi at the links below.
Patrick Shiroishi on Instagram
Queen City Sounds and Art 
You must be logged in to post a comment.