American-Japanese, Los Angeles-based tenor sax player Patrick Shiroishi and fellow American, Brooklyn-based drummer Jason Nazary have collaborated in the short-lived SSWAN quintet (Invisibility Is An Unnatural Disaster, 577, 2022), but here i am no i is their debut duo album, dedicated to the late trumpeter jaimie branch, a close collaborator of Nazary, especially in the electroacoustic duo anteloper.
The album is a free-flowing collection of seven short, melancholic, and genre-binding pieces that reflect Shiroishi and Nazary’s trying to come to terms with the untimely and unimaginable loss of a close friend. It is the first collaborative project of Nazary after branch’s passing. Shiroishi sent seven tracks to Nazary, and Nazary added his layered parts in one go in his studio. Shiroishi adds fragile, ethereal vocals and effects to his tenor sax, and Nazary adds percussion and electronics.
The album captures the emotional vulnerability following branch’s passing. The electroacoustic layers expand the common, often muscular tenor sax-drums duo format into a more introspective, compassionate, and vulnerable tone-poem quality. The last piece, «approach of the horizon», best captures the album’s spirit. It offers a life-affirming, positive energy, channelling the painful, expressive lament into a deeply touching, invigorating force, in the true spirit of the one and only branch.
Eyal Hareuveni
Jason Nazary (drums, percussion, electronics), Patrick Shiroishi (tenor saxophone, voice, effects)
