Global Music Column – October

Titanic – Vidrio

Over three solo albums, Guatemala-born and Mexico City-based cellist and singer Mabe Fratti has honed the art of creating music that revels in an underlying unease. Since her 2020 debut Pies Sobre La Tierra, Fratti has undercut her soft falsetto and floating melodies with fragments of scraped bows on strings, shards of whispered electronics and thorny harmonies. Fratti’s sonic world is all tension and release, compelling in its yearning movement.

For her latest project, Titanic, Fratti has partnered with Mexico City multi-instrumentalist Hector Tosta. Their debut album, Vidrio, channels that same tension, but rather than operate in Fratti’s usual world of off-kilter folk, Tosta’s influence broadens their palette with jazz improvisation, driving drum grooves and atonal orchestration.

Read the review in the Guardian.

[This piece was published on 13/10/23]