New York based Japanese jazz and electronic music polymath Takuya Nakamura shares the new single Shape The Future featuring South London-born vocalist Greentea Peng.
The title track from his forthcoming second longplayer Shape The Future – an LP which arrives almost 35 years into his storied musical journey – the track cruises into rattling sub-bass, dynamic breaks, crystalline electronics, and Nakamura’s signature trumpet playing. Greentea Peng’s seamless old-school vocals only intensify the rush.
The new single follows the previous single Broken Jazz featuring Tim Reaper. Both singles are taken from the first chapter of the album, which comprises studio recordings including Nakamura’s collaborations with Greentea Peng, Tim Reaper, Shigeto and Currency Audio.
The album’s second chapter documents a spellbinding live performance by Nakamura recorded at fabric – a hybrid set combining DJing, live electronics, vocals, and trumpet.
Across his career, Takuya Nakamura has played Brazilian music, merengue, salsa and straight-ahead jazz. He’s opened for Sun Ra Arkestra, performed with David Byrne, Terry Riley, Laurie Anderson, Lee “Scratch” Perry, GZA (Wu Tang Clan), and Arto Lindsay, appeared on sessions with Terry Riley, Goldie, and Cocorosie, and remixed the likes of Quincy Jones, Sun Ra, Billie Holiday, and The Streets. He’s also played under director and playwright Robert Wilson.
Although the musical past and present of the Tokyo-born, New York-based DJ and trumpet player is undoubtedly eclectic, Nakamura is abidingly steeped in the sounds of jazz and jungle. This’ll be obvious to casual observers who may have seen any viral videos of him. But there’s more to this. The depth of Nakamura’s engagement with these kinds of music, the way they’ve made him into the person he is, the decades-long path they’ve taken him on; to now arrive at the summit of a record like this is truly remarkable. Shape The Future resonates with every chapter in this story.
In high school, Nakamura’s friends started listening to jazz and jazz fusion, which piqued his interest, especially when they started going to clubs to see it live, where they managed to see US legends like Sonny Rollins play. Eventually he began to play jazz every day and his musical skill emerged early. He soon became obsessed with getting closer to the source of this music, which led to his studies at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston with George Russell, an influential figure who had taught Miles Davis and John Coltrane. Nakamura drank it in: not only the technical aspects but the sense of a direct connection to “a music culture [where] Russell and his friends changed harmony forever. I wanted to know how that was possible!”.
This was a radical experience in itself, but then another revolution happened for Nakamura. He was playing in a venue called The Western Front, near Boston and discovered that the elderly owner had his own soundsystem and was playing what was then – in 1992 – only just becoming known as jungle. This was as freeing a musical revelation as his proximity to the giants of jazz was, and in that instant the two things fused. He understood that using technology to fill a dancehall with sound and a jazz musician’s reflexes, are all working to the same ends: “you’re always making decisions,” he says, “but it doesn’t have to be really difficult. It’s the truth of the frequencies, and how they’re affecting people’s minds.”
From that moment on, his life path was set. Moving to New York City, he sought out jungle and its offshoot sounds wherever he could find them, gigging and collaborating relentlessly, and gradually developing his own live and hybrid live/DJ shows. Through regular appearances at New York fixtures Zebulon and CBGBs, and continual shows elsewhere in the city, Nakamura developed his live performance and DJing and it was in these environments that he gradually weaved together his twin loves without compromising either, building an international reputation in the process.
It’s only fitting then, that half of this new double LP, arriving almost 35 years after he first found his musical direction, should be a live one; a window into this never-ending process. A member of the fabric team got turned on to his music after their daughter saw him play. Of course, as a jungle lover, Nakamura knew fabric – which has a special place in the history of jungle and drum’n’bass – and “had wanted to play there since I was very young.” You can hear the club in Chapter 2 of the record: this isn’t just a live show, in keeping with his jungle roots, it’s Nakamura duetting with the soundsystem, and you can feel how the emotions in the room would have ebbed and flowed.
This dynamic translates to a transfixing record. Setting the tone with lushly textured ambient and reverberant jazz, Nakamura segues into cinematic breakbeat and stellar fusion, infusing it all with intoxicating low end and hypnotic rhythms. The LP’s midway point locks into mesmeric percussion heightened by resonant echoes of piano and trumpet. There’s an endless pull to this music. Nakamura adjusts the levels for maximum impact throughout, and the overall effect begins to evoke some harmonious hybrid between a jazz ensemble, a classic Metalheadz 12” and a Theo Parrish DJ set. His electric form continues through surreal jazz, intricate electronics and rolling sub-bass velocity, right up to the subtly devastating final cover of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush’s Don’t Give Up, with Nakamura’s fragile vocal sitting in the heart of a huge sound.
From Tokyo jazz nights to formative studies and encounters in Boston to his artistic development in New York, Nakamura reaches another milestone with this monumental double record. It’s a release that happened just the way a Takuya Nakamura record should. In the same way his instincts led him to musical revelations, taking his own sweet time has led him to make one of the most extraordinary albums imaginable, all executed in his own singular style. In Nakamura’s world, the universe finds a way.
Takuya Nakamura – Shape The Future
Preorder
Tracklist:
Chapter 1 – Studio Album – released digitally 29th October:
1. Takara Island ft. Shigeto
2. Broken Jazz ft Tim Reaper
3. Make A Wish
4. Shape The Future ft. Greentea Peng
5. Monium
6. Don’t Give Up
Standard black vinyl – released 12th November:
Chapter 1 – Studio Tracks:
A1 – Takara Island ft. Shigeto
A2 – Broken Jazz ft Tim Reaper
A3 – Make A Wish
B1 – Shape The Future (Instrumental version)
B2 – Monium
B3 – Don’t Give Up
Chapter 2 – Live Album Mix:
C1 – Shape The Future – Live From Room 3 (Part 1)
D1 – Shape The Future – Live From Room 3 (Part 2)
Deluxe orange vinyl – released 12th November:
Chapter 1 – Studio Tracks:
A1 – Takara Island ft. Shigeto
A2 – Broken Jazz ft Tim Reaper
A3 – Make A Wish
B1 – Shape The Future ft Greentea Peng
B2 – Monium
B3 – Don’t Give Up
Chapter 2 – Live Album Mix:
C1 – Shape The Future – Live From Room 3 (Part 1)
D1 – Shape The Future – Live From Room 3 (Part 2)
Chapter 2 – Live Album Mix – released digitally 12th November:
1. Balloon Song
2. Monium
3. Round About
4. Takara Island ft. Shigeto
5. Broken Jazz ft. Tim Reaper
6. Make A Wish ft. Currency Audio
7. Don’t Give Up
Gear List:
Teenage engineering OP-1, OP-1 Field, OP-XY, CM-15 Field Mic
Arturia mini bruit
Nord Wave
Boss SP303
Boss PS-2
Trumpet : Martin Committee
Takuya Nakamura Live Dates:
25 Sept 2026 – New York, Elsewhere
2 Oct 2026 – Sydney, Move My Way
3 Oct 2026 – Melbourne, Move My Way
12 Oct 2026 – Leeds, Belgrave Music Hall
13 Oct 2026 – Newcastle, The Grove
15 Oct 2026 – Sheffield, The Forge
16 Oct 2026 – Manchester, New Century Hall
17 Oct 2026 – London, EartH
21 Oct 2026 – Amsterdam, Melkweg
22 Oct 2026 – Paris, Essain
24 Oct 2026 – Glasgow, Sub Club
25 Oct 2026 – Edinburgh, Sneaky Pete’s
29 Oct 2026 – Dublin, Opium Room
30 Oct 2026 – Belfast, The Limelight
6 Nov 2026 – Milan, Magnolia
7 Nov 2026 – Bristol, Simple Things Festival
20 Nov 2026 – San Diego, Music Box
21 Nov 2026 – Los Angeles, Fonda
26 Nov 2026 – Toronto, The Opera House
27 Nov 2026 – Chicago, Subterranean
3 Dec 2026 – Philadelphia, The Foundry
5 Dec 2026 – Washington DC, Flash
10 Dec 2026 – Atlanta, Variety Playhouse
12 Dec 2026 – Miami, ZeyZey
17 Dec 2026 – Seattle, Neumos
19 Dec 2026 – San Francisco, Regency Ballroom
Photo credit: Ryan Chun
https://www.instagram.com/space_tak/
