Yuki Ito: Retattanni no Mori

Jul 01, 2024

Retattanni no Mori (Birch Tree Forest) is a 2019 solo album from bassist Yuki Ito.

Over the album’s six tracks and 30 minutes, Yuki Ito is unaccompanied but unafraid with her formidable upright bass, playing three original compositions, two covers, and one free improvisation.

It could be considered a brave endeavor to release a solo album on bass (or upright bass, aka double bass, contrabass, acoustic bass, upright, standup, or wood bass). As the great bassist Christian McBride humorously would put it, “I’m just the bass player”, a lighthearted play on a stereotype of the role (similarly, the title of his new album with bassist Edgar Meyer is But Who’s Gonna Play the Melody? — a double double bass album!).

The deep bass notes may even sound intimidating to some, like a grave voice about to announce something serious, intone a warning, or deliver bad news. Think of Alan Rickman’s or Darth Vader’s commanding authority. Potential listeners could feel tentative about giving a solo bass album a try, and bassists may be concerned about that when considering this format.

On the other hand, the low bass range can be deeply comfortable and solid, warm and secure like a thick blanket providing protection. Think of Morgan Freeman’s soothing gravitas.

Perhaps the overall impression depends on the delivery and style, the environment that the low notes are sent into, and the changed environment created by their presence.

For this album, the physical environment is nature, a forest in a mountain region, and the created space is slow, comforting, and kind. It’s definitely a welcoming invitation.

Sonically as well, an album filled only with bass notes creates an environment different from everyday jazz albums. That difference helps the music stand out by offering a distinctive thirty minutes of music and a special experience with deep resonance.

Bass in Jazz

It goes without saying that the deep bass note register and walking bass lines have been an important feature of jazz music through the years. It’s easy to associate jazz bass with the characteristic locked-in groove that, together with drums, delivers that propulsive, gravitational force that hooks listeners and doesn’t let go. Even so, casual listeners may overlook the bass, or “feel it but not hear it”, as bass lines can be overshadowed by louder and higher register instruments.

Also, in tight stage spaces upright bassists often stand in the background with their large instruments behind the front-line players or between the piano and drums. It’s an audible low range that is strongly felt by listeners but typically doesn’t stand out glaringly, appearing to be a supporting role to spotlit horns and vocalists.

That is, until a bass solo arrives, the band’s volume lowers or even drops out entirely, and the low-frequency notes magnetically draw hushed, rapt attention from the audience for several moments.

It’s easy to imagine that casual listeners may regard jazz bass as that big, cool instrument in the back and the background, doing something at the bottom, not standing out, and providing that constant and addictive groove of notes that spread out, connect, and fill up the room with grounded energy.

A solo bass album is a great opportunity to put this great instrument in the spotlight, expand those horizons, and bring it out from the background, to stand out with the standup bass.

Yuki Ito’s Solo Bass

Instead of exploring normal expectations like walking bass lines or bowed arco playing, Ito uses the bass as her voice to lyrically focus and improvise on the songs’ themes. The melodies that Ito plays are tenor or alto-like in their songful qualities, like a solo vocalist humming and vocalizing in those ranges. It’s a very musical approach where the sole instrument just happens to be solo bass.

While playing the melody on high strings, Ito hits bass notes or lets loose pedal tones on ringing lower strings, sometimes simultaneously to great effect. Hearing the occasional creak of the instrument’s wood and the deep timbre of the sound box gives a clear sonic image of the large instrument, one that brings the listener right up close to the upright. Ito even incorporates knocking on the bass’s body on one track, another element that brings the large wooden instrument tangibly closer to the ears.

The album is full of slower-to-midtempo pulses, emotionally delivered, so are flexible and rubato at many times, but not so loose as to be freeform ambient music.

Ito’s north star is the theme and feel of each song, so tricks for tricks’ sake are not part of the plan. Specific techniques for stringed instruments arise naturally, mostly with double stops and split string playing to allow bass notes and melodies to coexist and frame the music.

The album’s closing improvisation brings this to an excellent peak with a catalog of impromptu ideas like broken chord arpeggios, tremolo plucking, harmonics, pedal drones, and more, fitting the musical content without being overdone. There are even actual birds singing along with Ito’s notes, as if in accompaniment. This last track goes on for an elevated five minutes of misty adventure and certainly would have still been wonderful at twice that length or more.

The Recording

The album was recorded in 2019 in Hokkaido at a recording studio located among birch trees in the mountains. Tracks #1-5 were recorded in the studio, and track #6 was recorded behind the studio, outside, making the most of the natural setting full of trees and birds (note the tune’s subtitle “Birdsong”).

This birch-filled scene is shown on the cover photo with Ito and her bass, surrounded by trees with the chirps of birds as she becomes part of the environment to transform the experience into spontaneous music.

Compositions, Covers, and Improvisation

With solo performances, tentative listeners may worry that a player’s complete control and freedom could result in unconstrained playing without limits leading to wildly free or abstract playing (of course, some listeners will love how that sounds!)

Yet most of the music on Retattanni no Mori consists of written-out pieces. That is, songs with distinct structures and melodies enclosing and influencing the improvisation within.

Ito’s original compositions on Retattanni no Mori have plainspoken and almost folk-song qualities. For example, track #1 “Hinageshi” lays out a theme like downward stairsteps forming a gentle melody, a leisurely stroll in a relaxed mood.

With a similarly quaint feel, the title track #4 “Retattanni no Mori” is poetically expressive, mesmerizing with ideas floating over the implied chord changes, a traditional story being told and felt without words.

In contrast, the third original is Ito’s track #3 “Brace”, which brings her self-accompaniment most clearly to the foreground on this album. The song is anchored by a sparse bass line created by low two-bass hits and percussive knock-on-wood bass body thumps. These effects set the groove, frame measures, and mark chord changes strikingly. The rhythmic posts are strung together with Ito’s higher string playing filled with slick licks and improvised lines. It’s quite a guitarlike approach, funky, groovy, and spirited, a physically present sound with Ito playing at her bluesiest.

This impressive self-accompaniment style also brings to mind bassist Brian Bromberg’s solo performance of “Come Together”, originally recorded on his 2006 album Wood… an album title that surfaces another nice parallel to the recording studio where Retattanni no Mori was recorded, Studio Wood, in Asahikawa, Hokkaido, a mountainous, tree-covered locale with a rich heritage of woodworking and craftsmanship.

In addition to Ito’s compositions, two jazz standards are included. Track #2 “Nature Boy” is haunting and tenderly sad (see the recent

The Honest Broker

article by

Ted Gioia

for more on this fascinating song and songwriter.

Meanwhile, track #5 “On the Sunny Side of the Street” is a slight outlier on the tranquil and meditative album. Ito plays this tune at a cheery tempo and with a swing feel, where plucking and sliding of fingers on strings, together with inhales of breath between musical phrases, underlines the noteworthy and ably accomplished solo aspect of the record.

The last piece is track #6, “Free Improvisation ~Tori no Koe~”, a collection of improvised musical ideas and string techniques inspired by the surrounding natural environment which Ito becomes a part of for those final five minutes of the album.

Overall, it’s an easily-returnable album for its unique moods and musical moments: low frequencies and skillful playing, clear themes with soothing melodies and spontaneous invention, and interesting music to absorb and wrap up in.