EXPERIMENTAL
BY JOHN MULVEY
Amor Muere
★★★★
A Time To Love, A Time To Die
SCRAWL. DL/LP
Mexico City left-field supergroup’s time has come.
Mabe Fratti, a Guatemalan singer and cellist currently working out of Mexico City, is one of the rising stars of the global avant-garde. A couple of months ago, she turned up in MOJO’s Jazz column as half of Titanic alongside pianist/guitarist Hector Tosta. This time, she’s resurfaced in Amor Muere, four female improvisers who combine cello, violin, synth and tape manipulation into a kind of radical reinvention of the string quartet. If the capsule description suggests stern compositional austerity, this five-track debut is an often playful, often ethereal, constantly inventive pleasure, where the angular improvisations come together in micro-detailed harmony; 19-minute closer Violeta y Malva – think Julia Holter circa Tragedy – is a study of an intuitive quartet in constant, intuitive flux. And out of the beautiful sound designs, songs emerge too: Camille Mandoki’s vocal on Love Dies recalls Kate Bush’s deeper register on a track like Wild Man.