Review Summary: art pop, free jazz, modern classical, environment, reaction, purpose, heart
I am gazing at pictures of the La Orduña artist residency in Mexico City, the place where Mabe Fratti lived during lockdown and the conception of her excellent second album
Será que ahora podremos entendernos, and I see the music in them. Rounded doorways; low decorative railings. Secret light and shadows. Primeval greenery gently spilling out of the courtyards. The people here finding language occupying an imperfect space in their communication. It looks like the kind of place in which frustration can turn into the proverbial milk and honey of creation for someone who wants to be understood, and who speaks instinctual music.
Se ve desde aqui is different. Aspects of it are still fuelled by intuition but there is rigour as well. An artist consciously working against their ingrained instincts and strengths often finds an imperfect result the first time around, but generosity here allows a level of communal input which overcomes all the standard pitfalls. Fratti has made an album about reaction and adaptation which does that – living in dry fidelity, she uses cello and synthesizers as an artisan would while building a staircase. Her collaborators move around her, a stab of prickly guitar, drum strokes darting out like dappled sunlight on a reservoir. While her second album captured the feeling of temporal stasis, this is very much an album of overcoming entropy. While her unselfish instrumental work provides a platform, her airy vocal breathes life into the skeleton.
Fratti talks about the removal of blockages in her interviews – that after the pandemic, many felt the need to express, to run, to do.
Se ve desde aqui is a reaction and result. As a listener, I’m thrilled by hearing the pressure of immense creativity propel the creator into a sprint. I see clear water cleanse the pulp and fiber of decaying blockage. And this music, it is so incredibly human; like a nervous smile before walking on a stage, or jumping into a freezing pool, or reaching for crumpled, handwritten vows in a jacket pocket with a lump in your throat. Isn’t it reassuring to know someone else is daunted and excited at the same time?
