MABE
Cello, synthesizers and a voice that can caress and freeze. Guatemalan composer and experimental cellist Mabe Fratii is heading from her current home in Mexico City to Atrium in Žižkov with the album Será Que Ahora Podremos Entendernos. Her music accompanies listeners through a multi-layered range of sounds, where elements of contemporary dream-pop and shoegaze are mixed with Gregorian chants or echoes of the musical tradition of the Sephardic Jewish community.
“The result is nine tracks that inspire inner spaciousness, undercut with a journeying sense of unease, through the creation of ambient, textural soundscapes,” says The Guardian.
The debut EP Pies Sobre la Tierra from 2019 introduced the world to new hypnotic compositions, which Mabe Fratti interweaves with free improvisations. “She plays the cello like a wild angel,” said a selector and a journalist Mary-Anne Hobbs. The second album then earned the praise of music media from Pitchfork through NPR to The Wire magazine. The album, whose title could be translated as “Can we understand now?”, Opens up space for new lyrical nooks and shifts the work of a Guatemalan musician to the unexplored parts.
Although cello playing is still essential, last year’s record also includes vintage sounds of synthesizers, field recordings or guitars emerging from a drone background.
