WHEN MABE FRATTI launched herself into Mexico City’s buzzing free improvisation scene, her playing was much like her speech: fast, enthusiastic, overflowing with ideas. “I was thinking about everything that I had discussed about improvisation, so there was no improvisation at all,” she explains with a laugh. “Then I feel that my listening improved.” She started to enjoy the dialogue, the conversation. “My favourite part is when you find that moment of exquisite communication.”
The Guatemalan cellist and singer’s fourth solo album, Sentir Que No Sabes (‘Feel Like You Don’t Know’) is full of those moments. The Brian Eno-shimmer of Pantalla Azul (‘Blue Screen’) takes the ominous computer crash message as its central metaphor; Enfrente (‘In Front’), showing Fratti’s deep love for Talk Talk, is about trying to find meaning in a slippery world. Her last solo album, meanwhile, was called Será Que Ahora Podremos Entendernos – ‘Will We Be Able To Understand Each Other Now’. It’s a question at the heart of Fratti’s music, which takes a Björk-like approach to pushing intricate song structures out of their comfort zones with synthesizers, brass and, on Quieras O No, vocoder.
“I really enjoy experimentation,” Fratti says, sheltering from the midday sun of a Mexico City heatwave in her home studio. It was here where she and the musician Héctor Tosta, her partner and the producer of Sentir Que No Sabes, started work on the record, seeking a “freaky” groove. “How to nurture music with experimentation? How far can I create that tension? I really admire people like Scott Walker or Talk Talk. The older they got, the more they would expand that tension. I want that for my life – but who knows?”
Uncertainty is a recurring theme in Fratti’s work, so it’s appropriate that she never planned to be a cellist. Born in 1991 and raised in Guatemala City, she wanted to learn to play the saxophone, but lung problems made strings the more sensible choice. While her parents encouraged religious and classical music, Fratti first learning about performance from playing in church, she found teenage friends who guided her towards Arthur Russell and Cocteau Twins. The great catalyst for her current music, however, came in 2015, when she was invited by the G
