“inspired amalgamation of jazz, funk, hip-hop and neo-soul” – All About Jazz
Kobe-born, Brooklyn-based trumpeter Takuya Kuroda is dedicated, and his eighth studio record, 2025’s Everyday, is proof of that. Kuroda has not missed a beat since the release of 2022’s Midnight Crisp –– a record PopMatters called a “future classic”. Now, the 45-year-old musician desires to achieve the “perfect blend of production and organic performance”. It’s why he continues to throw himself into his daily practice, nearly thirty years into his musical life.
Everyday builds on and dives ever deeper into the hip hop and neo-soul elements of his previous work. Here, it is a deliciously rhythmic enterprise and a triumph of genre-blending modern jazz. Moreover, Kuroda’s playing is sure-footed and pure –– whether on the horn, synth, or Rhodes. He virtuosically dances among infectious rhythms of his own creation.
Kuroda’s twenty-one years in the United States have been fruitful. After studying composition at The New School, he threw himself into work. There, he played with DJ Premier’s Badder Band and Akoya Afrobeat and recorded as a sideman and bandleader. But as Kuroda himself says, “the only way to make the music that I want to make is to work hard, every day.” And so we have Everyday, a title which reflects, as Kuroda puts it, “that simple message.”
Everyday is hyperaware of a panoply of old ideas and a pantheon of old gods. However, as Kuroda engages these tropes and personalities day in and day out, he turns it all around in a style that’s undeniably cool and personal. As Pitchfork put it, “Kuroda’s skill is not drawing influence from so many different forms, it’s radiating joy in doing so.” It’s this sterling dedication that makes Takuya Kuroda and Everyday anything but commonplace.
Recommended for fans of Theo Croker, Kamasi Washington, Karriem Riggins and Robert Glasper.
