top of page

Global Music Column – October

Mabe Fratti – Se Ve Desde Aquí

Life after lockdown has been a time of creative change for Mabe Fratti. The Guatemalan cellist and composer wrote her second album, 2021’s Será Que Ahora Podremos Entendernos?, while isolating in an artist’s compound outside Mexico City. The nine-track album was a delicate suite of gauzy melodies and keening string lines punctuated by field recordings – an enigmatic music searching for meaning.


On her latest album, Se Ve Desde Aquí, Fratti re-enters the world, recording between Rotterdam and Mexico City and supplanting her supple arrangements with an experimental process that seeks to embrace the rougher edges of self-expression. Recording without overdubs to enhance the power of singular instrumental sounds, Fratti sets a direct and forceful new tone. Opener Con Esfuerzo eschews the cocoon-like tonal warmth of Fratti’s typical layered string sections and soft falsetto, instead placing a reverberating synth line over scattered hits of snares and angular guitar lines. Desde El Cielo continues the staccato feel, with Fratti singing a plaintive melody over a rapidly disintegrating rhythm section.


Read the review in the Guardian.


[This piece was published on 09/09/22]

Recent Posts

See All

DJ Znobia: Inventor Vol 1 In the late 90s, dancer Sebastião Lopes was experimenting with the production software FruityLoops in his hometown of Luanda, Angola. Wanting to create harder, faster music t

Deena Abdelwahed – Jbal Rrsas Since the release of her debut album Khonnar in 2018, Tunisian DJ and producer Deena Abdelwahed has been on a mission to recontextualise popular music from the Arab world

Every few years, there is a flurry of excitement as an artist is “rediscovered”. Old cassettes, records and master tapes are dusted off to produce slick reissues, sparking fresh reappraisal and length

bottom of page