Patrick Shiroishi, 'To Kill A Wind-Up Bird'

When he's not collaborating remotely with the ambient-jazz quartet Fuubutsushi, L.A. composer Patrick Shiroishi makes all manner of exploratory music: drone, ambient, free-jazz, black metal and noise all sorta live and breathe together. "To Kill A Wind-Up Bird," off his upcoming solo album Hidemi, layers saxophone and woodwinds in a frantic, yet controlled splatter. (The album is a tribute to his grandfather, named Hidemi, a survivor of the Japanese-American internment camps during WWII.) Staccato sax shakes down the melody's twittering counterpoint, leading to a mournful adagio and the closing, a Peter Brötzmann-like blast of bravado. The song's heightened antics are rather like a classic cartoon — pride before fall, restoration — which is fitting, given music video director Dylan Pecora's slightly unsettling (but funny) beat-for-beat puppet show.

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