Patrick Shiroishi - Hidemi (October 29, 2021 American Dreams)

“The concentration camps that Japanese Americans had to go through has been a major part of my work for the last couple of years,” says Los Angeles based composer and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi. His last album Descension was heavily focused on the experience inside Japanese-American concentration camps, but his new album Hidemi, a solo multilayered woodwind journey, is more on the personal experience of his grandfather after getting out. “His name is Hidemi Patrick,” Shiroishi explains, “so I was named after him, but I never got to meet him, as he passed away before I was born.” As Patrick’s name is in memory to his grandfather, Hidemi is too, and across the album’s nine tracks, Shiroishi brings the listener through tension and release, showcasing something unfiltered, beautiful, and ultimately hopeful, a testament to perseverance and grace.

If you’ve ever wondered what trios, quartets, and quintets of Patrick Shiroishi’s sounded like, Hidemi was made for you. All of the album was written and performed by Shiroishi who sang and played alto, baritone, tenor, C melody, and soprano saxophones, stacking up layers of harmonies often each recorded in one take. The album’s opening blasts on “Beachside Lonelyhearts” blow the doors open, but are quickly replaced by loping, interplaying melodies that swell, recede, then slowly, methodically shuffle off. Other songs like “To Kill A Wind-Up Bird” start with woodwind flurries and free jazz that metamorphosize into something serene before Shiroishi’s baritone sax, breaks open the piece, and brings back the beginning’s composed but frenetic energy.

Shiroishi wanted to allow for community expression, too, to be a part of Hidemi regarding the Asian-American experience, so he curated and edited a chapbook featuring writings and art by fellow Asian-American artists - Tangled. The book was made to provide a platform for thoughts considering the recent rise of violence against Asian-Americans due to racism spurred by misinformation on Covid-19, and features artists such as Dylan Fujioka, Mai Sugimoto, Tashi Dorji & Susie Ibarra.

In an evocative, personal essay from Tangled, Shiroishi explains the Japanese concept of “‘gaman,’ which means to endure the seemingly unbearable with patience and dignity, or simply put, to bite your tongue.” It’s a chilling, profound passage in which the history of Japanese-Americans have had to “gaman” with Shiroishi ultimately stating that “We can no longer ‘gaman.’ We must be loud and speak up, so what our grandparents and ancestors went through will not be forgotten or taken for granted.”

Hidemi functions as a warning, but there is ecstasy and hope in it, too. In the last song “The Long Bright Dark,” a short, blossoming tear-jerker that crescendos with Shiroishi’s vocals, the artist cries out in Japanese “Is This The End Of The Storm?” It’s the sole sung passage in Hidemi, but its effectiveness is chill-inducing - it contextualizes everything, pushing forward while acknowledging historical evil. It’s moving and impactful, moving towards a society where - in his essay he writes - “our children and future generations may live without fear. So that they won’t have to “gaman.” 

1. Beachside Lonelyhearts

2. Tule Lake Like Yesterday

3. Jellyfish In The Sky

4. What Happens When People Open Their Hearts

5. Stand Up And Let Us Go And Witness This Ourselves

6. To Kill A Wind-Up Bird

7. Without The Threat Of Punishment There Is No Joy In Flight

8. The Dowager's Clipped Wings

9. The Long Bright Dark

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Brett Naucke - Mirror Ensemble (October 1, 2021 American Dreams)

“I guess this is my indie rock record,” jokes Chicago electronic musician and composer Brett Naucke - he’s referring to his new LP Mirror Ensemble, created in conjunction with Windy City mainstays Natalie Chami (TALsounds) and Whitney Johnson (Matchess). The album is still leagues outside the confines of “indie rock,” and yet - with its embrace of other collaborators and robust instrumentation - it’s a major departure from his earlier, fully synth-based output, even if modular synthesizers still form its backbone. For one, the songs on Mirror Ensemble sound like...well, songs, often boasting melodic vocalization, strings, and lush layered synthesis. To curate such a cohesion, Naucke utilized scenes from Andrei Tarkovsky’s foundational 1975 film The Mirror as a signpost for mood and atmosphere. It paid off - Mirror Ensemble is bold and beautiful, demonstrating the peak possibilities of focused creation and trust in those closest to you.

It’s of utmost importance to note that Naucke, Chami, and Johnson are very, very close friends, and that tight kinship is the secret glue for Mirror Ensemble - look no further than the origin point to see. “He invited Whitney and I over for wine and cheese,” begins Chami, “and was like, ‘I have an idea for a record. He showed us clips from The Mirror with the vibe he wanted, and also shared recordings and other ideas. It was straight up like a fucking PowerPoint almost - like an audio-visual presentation for us.” Soon after the group set to creating - recording at Chami’s house, and building off of what Brett had laid down as initial arrangements and synthesizer passages, Chami and Johnson composed and played viola, piano, keyboard synthesizers, and vocal sections.

Film, photography, and visuals have always been important to Naucke’s practice, especially on earlier narrative albums like The Mansion, and it’s fully baked into the sound and feel of Mirror Ensemble. “I remember he played one scene with rain, fire, people kind of moving in and out of the buildings,” recalls Johnson. “It's probably 10 minutes, and there’s a convergence of so many elements.” Specific images like a tattered quilt, a creaky bed, a look between two people - all of these components impacted the trio’s recordings - these were often used as guides for improvisations, which were overlaid on Naucke’s modular synthesizer and other pre-composed sections.

Naucke’s vision for Mirror Ensemble is crystal clear, as are the record’s sonics. From the outset of “The Glass Shifting,” with its evocative viola, textural synth, and duet vocals from Johnson and Chami, it’s clear that Naucke is upping the sense of scale and narrative. Juxtaposing that relatively short piece with the next song, the longform “A Look That Tells Time,” Naucke takes the listener through a massive range of frequencies and timbres. “A Look That Tells Time” moves calmly from organ tones, plucky percussion, and gentle viola to lush, patient synthesizer that swells and stirs. Others like “Sleep With Your Windows Open” are naked, like you stumbled into a rehearsal you weren’t meant to see, but can’t stop watching. On it, Natalie Chami plays piano and sings softly. Room sounds impart a sense of the space, and synthesizer fades in and out, just enough to make its presence known, but never overstaying its welcome.

Mirror Ensemble is Naucke at his compositional and conceptual best. It’s a synthesizer record, an orchestral record, and in some ways even a soundtrack. While not quite indie rock, it’s a fierce burst into new territory, and with Naucke’s adventurous, ambitious writing and recording, there’s no telling where his attention will turn next. 

1. Vanity Well

2. The Glass Shifting

3. A Look That Tells Time

4. Catch Your Breath

5. Parallax

6. Rose Water 03:55

7. Sleep With Your Windows Open

8. Late-Century Reflection

Voice, Synthesizer, Organ, Piano - Natalie Chami

Viola, Violin, Organ - Whitney Johnson

Arrangement, Synthesizer, Organ, Piano - Brett Naucke

Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri

Photography - Michael Vallera & Brett Naucke

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Blue Lick - Hold On, Hold Fast (September 17, 2021 American Dreams)

“I was trying to express the aggression I was feeling without sounding like I had a chip on my shoulder.” That’s Havadine Stone of experimental electronic project Blue Lick, a duo with Chicago multi-instrumentalist Ben Baker Billington. Their debut LP Hold On, Hold Fast is a multivariable meditation on existence and a queasy sonic exploration. The album combines Stone’s vocals and writing with Billington’s roving modular synth soundscapes that oscillate between the caustic and the atmospheric, resulting in something singularly Midwestern - plainspoken but disorienting.

Composition for Hold On, Hold Fast began in 2020 with Stone starting the creative process, sending her vocal contribution to Billington. “I thought she might send field recordings,” he says, “but she ended up writing a long piece and reciting it.” Stone’s piece was a thirty-minute-or-so straight monologue navigating love, landscape, violence, the written word, and more. “And it's all one take,” Stone says. “I recorded it sitting in my closet, with my laptop and recorder - in the dark, reading it over again. I would say a word the wrong way, even though I had practiced so much, and then start over again. That was important to me - maybe that's part of making things hard for myself, but it was more satisfying to me.”

Once Stone turned in her vocals, Billington turned to his custom modular synth, made by Matthew Regula, to create backdrops, slicing the monologue into twelve pieces. “I would listen to her vocals over and over again,” Billington says, “writing patches for smaller, two minute pieces, then record three to five minutes of that patch. Sometimes I would write with the sounds starting and then having Havadine’s vocals creep in, or vice versa.” The attention to detail and meticulous listening paid off as the interplay between instruments and spoken word grants each aspect its own real estate.

There is a focus on beauty and love on Hold On, Hold Fast, but not the kind found in typical places. “If anything, I was trying to show the beauty I find in the Midwest, and the beauty that I find in things that aren't soft,” Stone says, spotlighting the free jazz-tinged, gentle nugget “X,” which features the most sexually explicit language on the album - “You got cum in my eye so many times I had begun to think you were doing it on purpose.” There’s humor there, as much as there is the expression or experience of romance. “I appreciate the point-blankness of just like...getting cum in your eye when you're in love,” she says, noting that though it may not be outright pleasant, it’s still an indication of connection and the act of love.

Other songs are more straightforward odes to the Midwest - “II” is a quick, seething number featuring panning percussion and low end from a rumbling synthesizer, invoking highway stretches, rows of corn, and subtle disruptions in an otherwise nondescript landscape. “This is the midwest,” incants Stone. “It’s flat and wide open, and when something is flat and wide open you can’t hide in it, can you? Unless you make yourself like wind. Move the body like a fish; see how it glides through the water like it wasn’t even there, like it was just thin air.”

There’s a connection between Billington and Stone submerged in the realm that precedes creation - things like intention and ethos. Though there is a surrealism in both instrumental and vocal realms, the album circumvents the soft allure of dreaminess, firmly footed in reality, but distorting it through a lens, gently. This is the Midwest without Culvers, where crop rows line the earth, where uniformity averts attention, where a few stalks back something waits, inspecting the passers by, and jotting down notes, as it has, and as it will continue to. 

1. I

2. II

3. III

4. IV

5. V

6. VI

7. VII

8. VIII

9. IX

10. X

11. XI

12. XII

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