NEW ALBUMS
MABE FRATTI
Sentir Que No Sabes UNHEARD OF HOPE 8/10
Cello from the other side: Guatemalan experimentalist hits a groovy sweet spot.
By Stephen Dalton
MELISSALUNAR
NOBODY can make a cello honk, slither, twang and gurgle like Mabe Fratti. In just a few short years, the prolific Guatemala-born, Mexico City-based musician, singer and composer has built an impressive international profile in experimental pop circles. Sentir Que No Sabes (which translates as “Feel Like You Don’t Know”) is her fourth album under her own name since 2020. Last year, she also released an album as half of Titanic, a jazzy avant-chanson duo project with her musical and life partner Hector Tosta (aka I La Católica), and another with the improvisational quartet Amor Muere.
The 32-year-old Fratti has also worked with a promiscuous gallery of collaborators, from Berlin post-punk legend Gudrun Gut to Danish indie-rockers Efterklang, British post-folk singer Ben Howard and sometime Björk/Thurston Moore drummer Chris Corsano. Howard likens Fratti’s performance style to “watching a sunbeam”, while Corsano calls her music “a continual opening of possibilities”.