Go Kurosawa – Soft Shakes

Go Kurosawa is a multi-instrumentalist, producer and co-founder of the independent label Guruguru Brain, best known as the drummer and vocalist of Kikagaku Moyo. After more than a decade rooted in collaboration, soft shakes marks a clear shift. It is his first solo album, made entirely alone and without a plan, shaped during a period of personal and geographic transition, as he and his partner stood on the verge of moving from the Netherlands to Japan.

The opening track, Moon, Please, makes clear how fully Kurosawa inhabits his realm. It starts as a rhythmic sprint, horns and synths stacked atop his steady percussion, before easing into a dub-tinged dance. Elsewhere, Jungle Cooking locks into a skewed boom-bap pulse, with strummed electric guitar and a buoyant bass line, off-kilter horn figures darting playfully around the beat. In the release notes, he says he hopes the record offers listeners a place to drift and return. “I wish people would travel somewhere else through music. You float around, lose track of time, and when the record ends, you feel the soft comfort of coming home again.” soft shakes carries that intention, a self-made album shaped by curiosity and quiet freedom.

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