Takuya Kuroda’s “No Sign,” from his fifth album Zigzagger, aims and succeeds at instantly entertaining with groove. It’s Kuroda’s trumpet playing that is the most memorable element on the song: jazz, in midsized bursts, as an impressive rhythm section trugs along.
Kuroda’s would like Zigzagger to be considered a soul jazz album, influenced by Lee Morgan’s soul jazz. Kuroda’s playing, however, is much closer to Miles Davis’s. It sounds like he’s studied both Miles’s attitude and his phrasing. Like Davis, Kuroda is a lyrical trumpeter, delivering us elegant and fluid playing that appeals to the mind. It is sometimes not paired evenly with the rhythm section. Listening attentively to Kuroda’s trumpet playing will reveal that he’d like us to have thought about a particular note he’s played as opposed to primarily feel entertained through his trumpet playing.
Takuya Kuroda’s “No Sign,” from his fifth album Zigzagger, aims and succeeds at instantly entertaining with groove. It’s Kuroda’s trumpet playing that is the most memorable element on the song: jazz, in midsized bursts, as an impressive rhythm section trugs along.
Kuroda’s would like Zigzagger to be considered a soul jazz album, influenced by Lee Morgan’s soul jazz. Kuroda’s playing, however, is much closer to Miles Davis’s. It sounds like he’s studied both Miles’s attitude and his phrasing. Like Davis, Kuroda is a lyrical trumpeter, delivering us elegant and fluid playing that appeals to the mind. It is sometimes not paired evenly with the rhythm section. Listening attentively to Kuroda’s trumpet playing will reveal that he’d like us to have thought about a particular note he’s played as opposed to primarily feel entertained through his trumpet playing.
Delighting his audience is the aim of “No Sign.” If John Coltrane was Orpheus with various saxophones, able to tame the wildest aspects of us, and Miles Davis the trumpet in residence of an urbane bacchanal, Kuroda has not quite produced Jazz with an obvious and particular societal mission. “No Sign” would be that much more impactful if it had one.
Zigzagger melds jazz, soul, hip-hop, afrobeat and electronica. It’s a mumbo jumbo, to quote Ishmael Reed, either of what Kuroda likes or perhaps to signify or culture identity. It does not quite have the bite of the great soul jazz albums such as Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder. Listeners will likely identify this song, and the entire album for that matter, as “mood music” - music to set a mood in a private or public space. Much of the playing on “No Sign” is pretty repetitive in order to be groovy: it makes perfect sense to put this song on and browse the internet or do whatever activity one wants where music sets a mood.
By Emmanuel Adolf Alzuphar
Takuya Kuroda – “No Sign”