Shiroishi, Patrick: Forgetting Is Violent (Vinyl LP)

Forgetting Is Violent, Patrick Shiroishi’s latest solo LP, is his most immediate release yet, expanding the scope not just of his music but of his extramusical considerations. Where his past releases on American Dreams reckoned with racism against Japanese Americans or presented Shiroishi’s saxophone as heard in a parking garage, Forgetting Is Violent considers racism as a whole, historical and ongoing, with the urgency it deserves.

Here, for the first time, we hear Shiroishi joined by a supporting cast that reads like a who’s-who of heavy music: Aaron Turner (SUMAC, ISIS), Gemma Thompson (Savages), Faith Coloccia (Mamiffer), otay::onii (Elizabeth Colour Wheel), and Mat Ball (BIG|BRAVE). The constant, as ever, is Shiroishi's patient, probing musicality, marrying heaviness and lightness, acceptance and defiance, both packing a punch and welcoming new listeners into the fold.

1. To protect our family names
2. Mountains that take wing
3. ...what does anyone want but to feel a little more free?
4. There is no moment in my life in which this is not happening
5. One last walk with the wind of my past
6. Prayer for a trembling body
7. To become another being there has to be some kind of death
8. Trying to get to heaven before they close the door