Listen to this: Maby Frati’s experimental cello pop

The opening notes of “Kravitz”, which kicks off Mabe Frati’s 2024 record Feeling like you don’t know, It sticks in my mind permanently. It’s not a flashy album by any means. But there’s something about the twang of her cello, played as she would an upright bass. The way they tinkled before they suddenly stopped, the fuzz was still hanging in the air, given a slight kick and a snare that sat firmly in the pocket. There’s something industrial about the way it’s all put together, like the jazzy song “Closer.”

Then come Frati’s panicked lyrics in Spanish about ears on the ceiling and someone listening through the walls, and slightly atonal trumpet blasts. In the back half, the arrangement blossoms with big piano chords, and the drums pick up steam. It’s the perfect opener for a record that sees Frati take her experimental impulses and work them into something more like pop, moving further away from her avant-garde roots.

Frati was born in Guatemala, but works out of Mexico. She’s been told pitchfork That when she was a child, her parents played mostly Christian and classical music around the house. But as a teenager, she discovered Limewire and the works of experimental composers like György Ligeti. This more expansive, internet-based musical system is on display in tracks like “Pantalla Azul.” She moves and plays with different styles from gothic rock to new age, but always returns to the strength of Frati’s melodic instincts. Meanwhile, “Oidos” leans entirely into chamber pop, with hesitant cello stabs, plaintive trumpet, and what sounds like an autoharp.

Even when arrangements are stripped away, Feeling like you don’t know It looks lush and enveloping. You’ll feel equally at home in a café or on stage. The production from I. La Católica (Héctor Tosta) is the glue that holds together Frati’s frenetic stylistic shifts and the cello’s jagged manipulations. It would be easy for the delicate horns, syncopated pizzicato strings, and icy digital synths to sound like several different albums thrown together haphazardly. Instead, an undercurrent of unease and crushing drums form a thread that ties all the disparate pieces together.

This is not to say that there are not moments of fully experimental experiences. Frati indulges her more abstract musical tendencies in interludes like “Elástica” I and II, but the Feeling like you don’t know is how to repackage her experimental instincts into something more approachable and sometimes engaging.

The comparison is often brought up when discussing Frati’s music Arthur RussellThis is logical. Russell was also a pioneering cellist with amazing pop instincts. But he has rarely married these two aspects of his music as directly as Frati does. Most often, he had pop songs, he had experimental compositions. Over her last few albums, as a solo artist and as part of the duo Titanic, Maby Frati has sought to break down those walls.