It’s a little hard to believe that Takuya Kuroda’s “Rising Son” was originally released in 2014. It sounds more like an album that belongs to the last couple years. The blend of jazz sounds and structures—and other more experimental forms—with hip-hop beats feels like it could sit comfortably alongside recent albums from Makaya McCraven or some of Shabaka Hutchings’s output. Kuroda and his band on “Rising Son—” which includes Kris Bowers on keys, Solomon Dorsey on bass, Corey King on trombone, Nate Smith on drums, and Jose James on vocals on a few tracks—are so adept at switching modes from track to track (and within tracks), from straight-ahead jazz to funkier grooves to a kind of melancholy pop sound to Steely-Dan-esque studio session rock. A review in JazzLine from 2014 features some mild pearl-clutching about whether jazz purist critics would even consider the album “jazz.” Funny in hindsight, especially because some of the most vital jazz being made right now highlights this same fusion of hip-hop, experimental music, and various jazz traditions.
The title track and first track on the album basically gives you everything you need to know about what Kuroda’s doing. Keys and sticks on drum heads, a cool-as-hell beat to start off the track, and then Kuroda enters on trumpet, so confident, playing the main theme. You get almost everyone showing off: Smith’s drums and Bowers’s keys form the bulk of the track and King’s right there next to Kuroda on the melody.
“Piri Piri” is one of my other favorites on the album. This track especially has the late Steely Dan vibe, where you can imagine the session musicians hired for “Gaucho” jamming together without the oversight of Fagen and Becker. This one has such a good groove—a great showcase for both Dorsey’s bass playing and (again) Smith’s drumming. There’s a section around four minutes in when it’s almost all Dorsey, Smith, and Kuroda, and it’s incredible. Later on, Kuroda gets a call-and-answer section going with King, and that leads into a final minute or so of the band hitting the main theme again.
Also, “Call,” what a tune. The whole band going all out. Sounds a little like a stitched-together track, like an edit of a big jam, with many discrete sections. The kind of long track that earns its runtime with big performances from everyone. Kuroda starts an absolutely blazing solo around the three-minute mark and doesn’t let up for two full minutes, when he turns it over to Bowers for his solo. The last three minutes of “Call” are so good—the whole album, in fact, is full of great endings. The last minute of this track starts as a shapeshifted keyboard, then the rest of the band comes in, a little esprit d’escalier, like they forgot they wanted to say one last thing real quick.