ASUKA KAKITANI/MARK URNESS, The Garden

Japanese composer Asuka Kakitani’s The Garden begins with a question that gradually becomes stranger the longer one listens: what might plant life sound like if its hidden processes—rooting, germination, pollination, growth, decay and regeneration—could be translated into the deep resonance of a single double bass? Rather than turning nature into picturesque musical wallpaper, Kakitani and bassist Mark Urness create a decidedly unconventional sonic ecosystem, one populated by dark drones, percussive attacks, scraping strings, abrupt high-register flashes and hypnotically recurring patterns. The result can feel beautiful, mysterious, ominous and, at times, almost disorienting—a 42-minute journey into a world operating beneath the surface of ordinary perception.

Kakitani conceived the album around her fascination with the interconnected systems that allow plants to thrive: soil, sunlight, water, insects, birds and countless unseen organisms. Her accompanying notes describe the composing process as tending a small garden, imagining seeds taking root, shoots reaching toward light, flowers opening, pollinators arriving and seeds eventually returning to the earth. That organic cycle becomes the album’s underlying architecture, although the music rarely depicts those processes literally. Instead, Kakitani translates their vitality and unpredictability into sound, revealing the double bass as a surprisingly expansive sonic organism.

Urness proves an ideal collaborator. A bassist equally experienced in classical, jazz and contemporary settings, he approaches the instrument with extraordinary technical freedom, shifting effortlessly between plucked and bowed passages, rhythmic articulation, sustained lines and more unconventional techniques that draw unexpected colors from the instrument.

Kakitani’s compositions give him an unusually large expressive canvas, while four short improvisations—“Ants’ House,” “Apple Tree,” “Fireflies” and “Hummingbird Moth”—allow him to respond spontaneously to the imagery between the composed movements. Brief spoken introductions by Kakitani, Urness and her daughter Mia add another human dimension, almost like voices entering the garden before disappearing into its odd musical undergrowth.

“Seeds” begins in strikingly sparse fashion. Widely separated bass plucks hang in the air, deep and spacious, creating an almost suspended sense of time. Single notes answer pairs of tones, with low-register sonorities occasionally giving way to unexpectedly high notes. Gradually, Urness introduces faster, more rhythmic movement, allowing a melodic current to emerge from the stark opening. Rasping textures and rapidly shifting registers reveal how much sonic territory one double bass can occupy. Eventually, sustained bowing deepens the piece, turning the instrument’s darker strings into a resonant voice. The music seems to be moving from tranquility toward life without ever completely abandoning the darkness underneath.

“Germination” expands that concept dramatically. Introduced by the voices of Mia and Urness, the nearly eight-minute work becomes the album’s most extensive study in transformation. A brooding bowed note repeatedly rises toward a brighter register, creating a vivid sense of emergence. Each recurrence subtly changes the balance, gaining rhythmic energy, higher-register intensity and greater complexity. What initially feels meditative gradually becomes almost playful, before turning increasingly intense and chaotic. Urness seems to coax an entire ensemble out of the bass, layering rhythmic gestures and resonances until the instrument feels almost orchestral. The closing breathiness returns the piece to something more fragile, leaving ominous shadows beneath its final shards of brightness.

The brief improvisation “Ants’ House” abruptly disrupts that balance. At just forty seconds, it consists almost entirely of disturbing high-register scrapes, squeals and unpredictable rhythmically articulated sounds. It feels less like a miniature composition than an eccentric sonic glimpse into a microscopic world.

“Ditch the Chemicals” brings the album’s environmental concerns into sharper focus. After all three voices announce the title, hard staccato strikes launch a dark, insistent bass pattern. The music carries an unmistakable sense of agitation, with metallic-sounding hits punctuating brooding bowed passages. A “Jaws”-like suspense develops beneath the surface as the rhythmic pressure increases. Higher notes attempt to rise above the churning lower-register activity, creating a compelling musical battle between organic growth and destructive interference. By the end, the piece has become a furious, chaotic swirl.

“Apple Tree,” another short improvisation, strips everything back to sparse dark plucks and murky sustain. Its ascending and descending gestures feel almost like a musical sketch rather than a fully developed statement, but that brevity works within the album’s larger cycle.

“Rooting” plunges deepest into subterranean territory. The spoken title gives way to dark, resonant bowing, with chaotic patterns suggesting tangled roots working their way through soil. Hammering strikes reinforce the sensation of digging or subterranean activity. As the tempo increases, Urness turns the bass into a throbbing, increasingly insistent force, maintaining the fundamental pattern while pushing into higher registers. The virtuosity becomes almost physical; rather than simply hearing the bass, one feels its vibration as a representation of something struggling beneath the earth.

“Fireflies” provides another improvisational interruption, this time through kinetic mid-register bowing and brighter flashes of movement. Yet darkness continues to surround the brief dance. Higher tones seem to dart through a brooding sonic landscape before disappearing, giving the miniature an elusive quality.

The expansive “Pollinators” may be the album’s most striking collision of darkness and vitality. Intense percussion and low-register bass establish an ominous foundation before higher plucked and bowed tones begin attempting to break through. The music repeatedly alternates between brooding rhythmic pressure and flashes of brightness, suggesting the fragile process of pollination occurring within a much larger and potentially threatening ecosystem. At its most intense, Urness produces a torrent of rapid bowed bass and punctuated hits that border on frightening. Then, remarkably, the density falls away. Higher and middle registers engage in a sparse conversation, creating a moment of almost miraculous calm before the piece ends with a brighter call-and-response gesture.

The thirty-four-second “Hummingbird Moth” again turns improvisation into atmosphere. A dark, buzzing sound gradually gathers force, resembling wind, an approaching train or an enormous insect hovering somewhere just beyond visibility.

“Fly, Fly, Fly Away, Seeds” returns to composed territory with perhaps the album’s most vivid fusion of its opposing forces. Low throbbing bass creates a brooding foundation while higher bowed lines move above it, at times sounding almost flute-like. The music becomes trance-like, then faster and more dance-oriented, suggesting seeds escaping the darkness of the ground and entering open air. Later, buzzing and fluttering sounds introduce a deliberately chaotic quality, as though bees, birds and airborne pollen have suddenly invaded the sonic space. Kakitani’s natural imagery becomes increasingly abstract, even surreal.

The album concludes with “Beneath Our Feet,” introduced by Kakitani and Urness. A fast-moving bowed pattern emerges over an ominous lower-register drone, creating a musical representation of the teeming activity beneath the earth. Higher figures rise out of the darkness but never fully escape it. The bassline grows in intensity, ultimately turning the garden beneath our feet into a swirling, almost overwhelming sonic universe.

The Garden is not an easygoing nature album, nor does it attempt to make the double bass conventionally pretty. Kakitani’s vision is more ambitious and peculiar. By stripping away the safety of melody-driven accompaniment and placing Urness in a hypnotic space to the point of disorientation, repeated patterns gradually alter one’s sense of musical time. Yet that quality feels intentional. A garden does not announce its growth in dramatic gestures; change happens slowly, invisibly and sometimes chaotically beneath the surface.

In that sense, The Garden succeeds precisely because it asks listeners to surrender familiar expectations. Kakitani and Urness transform a single double bass into soil, root, stem, insect, wind, darkness and sunlight, creating an unconventional meditation on interconnected life. It may occasionally feel like getting pleasantly lost inside its own sonic maze, but perhaps that is the point. Like wandering through an unfamiliar garden, the journey rewards patience, curiosity and a willingness to look—and listen—beneath the obvious.