Asuka Kakitani - The Garden
Asuka Kakitani & Mark Urness - The Garden
The Garden is fun to experience once as a listener, maybe twice if you have a fondness for the double bass. Composed by Asuka Kakitani, the album is a singular, multi-movement work performed by Mark Urness. While listed as an album for unaccompanied double bass, several of the tracks involve Urness overdubbing himself. Surprisingly, for being inspired by the lives of plants, Kakitani's music is driving throughout a majority of the album, demanding an intense sense of rhythmic integrity from Urness. Each of Kakitani's composed tracks begins by the composer, her daughter, and Urness speaking the title. Very quickly this turns from cute to hokey.
Opening with "Seeds," a resonant pizzicato introduction, the album then goes on to hit all of the prominent stereotypes associated with the bass as a solo instrument: melodies using only open strings and harmonics - "Germination," snap pizzicati and low grooving basslines - "Ditch the Chemicals," heavy string crossings and arpeggios - "Rooting," and open strings as pedal tones - "Pollinators." The final two tracks on the album, "Fly, Fly, Fly Away, Seeds" and "Beneath Our Feet," are the most musically interesting and would make for successful double bass ensemble chamber pieces in the future. The tracks do little to relate to each other, resulting in an album which comes across as etudes randomly tossed together rather than a thought-out continuous work. It also does a disservice to Kakitani's theme of growing plants, which does not have much audible connection to the music.
Scattered throughout the album are four brief interludes improvised by Urness. They show off his confidence as a bassist, as well as function as pallet cleansers between Kakitani's more intense movements. Urness does a phenomenal job as a player navigating the demands of Kakitani's music. Several movements sound as though they fit quite idiomatically on the instrument. Others, in particular "Rooting," give the impression of an arduous struggle for Urness as a performer. Kakitani uses the range of normal playing to sul ponticello a lot throughout The Garden, at many points making the melodies distort to an unforgiving degree of discomfort.
Recorded by Wild Sound Studios, the audio mix on the album places us physically close to Urness' instrument. This recording choice results in a lot of string noise to the final product of the album. While entirely a taste preference, I am not a huge fan of the perceived rawness prioritized over tone, which is apparent in the final mix.
distributed via Neuma Records
Comments
Post a Comment