The opening notes of “Kravitz” break Mabe Fratti’s 2024 record sentir que no sabes, Permanently imprinted on my mind. This is not a pretentious album by any means. But there’s something about the resonance of his cello, like you might have an upright bass. The way they play before suddenly stopping, the fuzz is still hanging in the air, set against a simple kick and seated firmly in the snare pocket. There’s something industrial about the way it all comes together, like a jazzy “closer”.
Then there’s ears on the ceiling and someone listening from the walls, and over a slightly atonal horn blast comes the frat’s crazy song in Spanish. Towards the end, the arrangement blooms with big piano chords, and the drums pick up steam. It’s the perfect start to a record that sees Fratti taking his experimental impulses and working them into something that more closely resembles pop music than veers away from his avant-garde roots.
Fratti was born in Guatemala, but works from Mexico. he has told pitchfork That, as a child, her parents mostly played Christian and classical music in the house. But as a teenager, he discovered the works of experimental composers such as Limewire and György Ligeti. This more elaborate, Internet-based musical diet is displayed in tracks such as “Pantala Azul”. It meanders around with different styles from goth rock to new age, but always comes back to the strength of Fratti’s melodic tendencies. Meanwhile, “Oidos” leans fully into chamber pop, with cello stabs, plaintive trumpets and an autoharp-like sound.
Even when systems fall apart, sentir que no sabes Looks lush and covered. It would feel equally at home in a coffee shop or on an arena stage. I. La Cattolica (Hector Tosta)’s production is the glue holding together Fratti’s frenetic stylistic shifts and erratic cello manipulations. It would be easy for the delicate horns, atonal pizzicato strings and icy digital synths to sound like several different albums haphazardly stitched together. Instead, the undercurrent of restlessness and lightly crushed drums forms a thread tying all the disparate pieces together.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t moments of downright experimental whimsy. Fratti incorporated his more abstract musical leanings on intervals such as “Elastica” I and II, but the genius of sentir que no sabes It’s in how it turns its experimental tendencies into something sometimes more accessible and downright charming.
Comparisons to Arthur Russell are often made when discussing Fratti’s music, and understandably so. Russell was also an avant-garde cellist with surprising pop tendencies. But he has rarely married those two sides of his music as directly as Fratti has. For the most part, they had pop songs, and they had experimental compositions. On his last few albums, both as a solo artist and as half of the duo Titanic, Mabe Fratti has tried to break down those walls.
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