Mabe Fratti goes dark and groovy on Sentir Que No Sabes

Fratti's breakthrough solo project of 2021, Sera Que Ahora Podremos Entendernos (“Will we be able to understand each other now?”), was whirlingly diverse and extravagant, her cello swaddled in reverb and autotune. And she’s constantly cropping up in collaborations rooted in jazz improvisation and composition techniques – like the experimental record Vidrio with partner Hector Tosta, and A Time To Love, A Time To Die with her avant-garde quartet Amor Muere. This latest record has all of that restless energy, but it’s differentiated by unexpected techno ingredients and pockets of grungy noise.

Take the lead single, “Kravitz”, which I can only assume was named for Lenny, because of its 90s stone-faced bass line. Its plain groovy filth, thrown off-kilter by the precise arrangement of its instrumental – those drunk, Bernstein-y horns, and sterile piano riffs. US house beats and industrial creaks in “Margin del Indices” and "Elastica I” bring moments of dark artifice to the work, where in previous releases, it was organic, biotic mimicry that was unsettling. There’s much here that’s immediate, too. Fratti’s voice is honest, almost deadpan, in its delivery of plain and modest phrases – and scoops up to notes like she’s a radio starlet. But that familiarity is constantly unsettled by its instrumental landscape, where scratching strings recall the compositions of Tony Conrad, and song structure is thoroughly disjointed and unpredictable, recalling the arrangements of Marina Herlop and Meredith Monk.

Lauded by musicians and producers from Chris Cortano to Oneohtrix Point Never to Ben Howard, it seems there’s something in Fratti’s work – whether that’s glossy atonals, chiptune motifs, or dark, groovy basslines – for everyone.