Consuming the Tangible

I love it when I discover something with tendrils. As per usual, it started with Erik, who introduced me to the soft, joyous psychedelic haze of Kikagaku Moyo. Through them, the tendril reached to the label, Guruguru Brain, and I discovered an entire world of interesting, complex yet utterly entrancing sounds from the likes of LAIR and Minami Deutsch, among others. But still more tendrils led on, and I discovered the label was co-founded and run by Go Kurosawa, who – to circle back to the beginning – was the drummer and vocalist for Kikagaku Moyo. A few years after the band’s end, he returns with soft shakes, his solo debut. It’s a change in sound that nonetheless is imbued with everything that enchanted me about Kikagaku Moyo’s music.

I said tendrils, but maybe an ouroboros makes more sense, the end leading back to the beginning. That summarizes the music on soft shakes, too. Kurosawa moves forward only to wind up back where he started, at least in an emotional sense. The music itself treads more ambient, electronic waters. “moon, please” almost sounds like Suicide with its opening pulses matched against a motorik beat. But Kurosawa’s voice is gentler, less confrontational than Alan Vega’s, and it’s complemented by a spacious backing of both electronic and acoustic instruments, all played by Kurosawa.

Suicide (the band, obviously) might be a sonic touchpoint, but it sits alongside more expansive composers. I can hear shades of Sufjan Stevens in the some the more intricate arrangements of horns and keyboards – all played and recorded by Kurosawa, by the way. As soft shakes moves on from “soda no umi” to the tentative acoustic guitar loop of “soredesho?” a pattern begins to emerge: sparse, skeletal sounds slowly building and coming together into something far more lush and expansive. Even if it’s only a few pieces of scattered percussion, said guitar, and his voice, the rhythms and arrangements grow closer, becoming something larger with more heft and weight. I love the way “green thing” embodies the color in its strings, and I equally love the synthetic, rudimentary beats on “autowalk” and its obvious Kraftwerk inspirations.

Is soft shakes the best way to get introduced to the genius of Go Kurosawa and his many, many tendrils? I’m not sure; one of the things I think about when I listen to it is how prepared I was for it. Did my prior knowledge of Kikagaku Moyo and the label’s roster and musical influence better establish expectations? If I came to this first, would I have made the same connections and musical travels?

Not sure. But damn this is a lovely, meditative album.