In a recent interview, multi-instrumentalist and radical song form detonator Asher White stated, regarding the truly grim moment the US is experiencing right now, “There is no singular apocalypse. There’s thousands of apocalypses all over, at all time.” It’s a good summation of the permanent state of disquiet anyone with a conscience is now experiencing. While the unifying messages (and naiveté) of 60-year-old protest songs appear to be nowhere in sight, musicians are constantly using their voices and instruments to at least comment on where the country has landed.
Improvising alto saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi’s latest album, Forgetting Is Violent, offers up an unsettling example. Between his solo releases, guest appearances, and collaborations, Shiroishi‘s output is staggering. Recent albums have found him using field recordings, synths, and other effects to meditate on his Japanese-American ancestors, some of whom experienced concentration camps at the hands of a misguided US government and its race-based paranoia during World War II.
With his latest, a more collaborative effort, he has cast the net wider, making statements about the corrosive effects of American racism in general as the country plunges into authoritarianism and the ruling party holds up a recently deceased transphobe, sexist, and racist as a martyr to white grievance. So, arguably, there is a much-needed proposal for freedom in Forgetting Is Violent, but tracks such as “Mountains That Take Wing” suggest how difficult it is to obtain. His sax flutters peacefully as if in flight, only to be mauled by shards of Aaron Turner’s guitar. Shiroishi responds with warbled cries as the guitar soars on brutal, sustained notes. It is music of stark beauty, but it’s often difficult to take.
Shiroishi has acknowledged that his love of the saxophone was sparked by artists such as John Zorn. He states, he “started playing in bands with saxophone in college and diving into weirder settings. We were more into punk jazz kind of stuff.” This most certainly explains the roots of his more turbulent outpourings, or guest appearances with the likes of the all-engulfing drone monsters Water Damage, or his involvement with the Detroit-based punk band the Armed.
However, his releases, including this one, show several sides of his music. One of the album’s muted, yet perhaps most disturbing tracks, “…What Does Anyone Want But to Be a Little More Free”, features Shiroishi’s aunt recalling her first experience with racism over a dreamscape of disembodied voices, radio transmissions, and wavering, electric harmonies from Shiroishi’s alto. There’s also “Prayer for a Trembling Body”, easily the album’s most peaceful track. Here, Shiroishi’s voice whispers what might be a hymn or a thousand-year-old ballad over the sparsest of soundscapes. In some ways, it recalls the calmer music from 2024’s Glass House.
The album is a suite of sorts, with Side One featuring the bulk of the collaborations and Side Two finding Shiroishi mostly in calmer solo waters. However, the album’s closer, “Trying to Get to Heaven Before They Close the Door”, which features guitarist Mat Ball, begins with a distant hum, perhaps a bee or a passing airplane, before a vocal line, somewhere between a howl and a sigh of relief, appears. Then the gnashing of Ball’s electric guitar enters, tumbling over and under the drone, suggesting that one can find freedom, but, like the plummeting of astronauts in a capsule re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.
The song’s final moments argue that if you can handle discomfort, the payoff is worth every minute. Less ambient than 2022’s Evergreen, and not as personal as 2021’s solo saxophone LP Hidemi, Forgetting Is Violent demonstrates Patrick Shiroishi’s gift for improvisation in a variety of settings as well as his continued use of his instrument to make insistent, brave social statements.