An Interview with Mabe Fratti

photo by Melissa Lunar

Mabe Fratti is a Guatemalan cellist and vocalist. After coming up in Mexico City’s improvised music scene, Fratti has since made a huge mark as a solo artist, combining electroacoustic textures, improvisation and deft songcraft. In addition to music under her own name, she’s also recorded as a member of Titanic (with her partner Hector Tosta, a.k.a. i.la católica) and Amor Muere. Above all else, she’s a great hang. I met up with her and her bandmates, Tosta and Dutch drummer Friso van Wijck, at a southern restaurant in Knoxville, TN during the Big Ears festival, on March 29, 2025.

Special thanks to The Wire for making it possible for me to go to Big Ears

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Thanks for taking the time to talk to me!

MF: I looked through your interviews and I really like the artists. CS + Kreme I really like.

Oh, they’re the best. Really lovely people, and deep music heads.

MF: We were playing in Melbourne, and I was talking with the sound engineer. I normally make friends with sound engineers because I really like to talk about the quality of the sound, they talk to me about microphones. The sound engineer was the guy with the beard, what was his name?

Sam?

MF: Yeah. He was doing sound for us at this event, and I was like “what’s the name of your band?” and he said CS + Kreme. So I listened to them, and I really liked that album Snoopy.

That one’s a classic to me.

MF: I heard the last one as well and I liked that one too.

So, a question I ask a lot of people is this: what are your earliest musical memories?

MF: Hmm… very random shit, man. I have a couple, but they are very different. Are you annoyed by the music? [Editor’s note: “I Love Rock N’ Roll” was playing very loudly in the background]

No, not at all.

MF: So, one is Kenny G, playing in the soundsystem in my house, because my mother had the CD. The other one is this new age compilation of sounds of whales with synthesizers.

That sounds cool!

MF: It was cool! The other one was very random Christian music, some classical music… maybe the one that I remember a lot was one of the Brandenburg concertos.

Do you like Kenny G?

MF: Well, of course the first answer would be that he’s too corny. But I mean, he had iconic melodies. You cannot take that away from him.

Definitely. I have trouble with it. I’m not even aesthetically opposed to his music, it’s something about his pitch that turns me off.

MF: Yeah. Also, he became the music for every hotel or elevator. Or wedding music, when people are having dinner. At least in Guatemala, that’s my experience.

Yeah, I’d say that’s how it is in the US too.

MF: Guatemala and America have a relationship, for sure, in the sense that we are very influenced by the culture. There’s a quantic jump between the US and Guatemala, you know?

Yeah. I don’t actually know very much about Guatemalan culture. I know a little about the US political involvement there. I was curious as to what the music scene was like in Guatemala City.

MF: It’s very diverse, very eclectic. Everyone would hang out with everyone. I would hang out with the DJs, with the rappers, with the reggae artists, ska, etc. There was this one label managed by a guy named Jurek called Bajo Presión - Under Pressure, basically - and everything would come out on it. Punk, rap, R&B, everything. It was very eclectic.

I made a couple of very good friends in the scene. It was through this one band that became kind of the big indie band in Guatemala, called Woodser. I met my friend Fernando, who we started a band with, and we became very good friends musically. Like, he would share a lot of music with me, and vice versa, and I would really trust his taste.

But yeah, it’s very eclectic. It’s not like there’s an experimental scene. I mean, I guess that in every country you have a metal scene, or a rock scene that is very strong, and that’s something that happened in Guatemala, but I was not a part of that.

That kind of reminds me of Chicago. All of the musicians I know are working with each other all the time and they aren’t really pinned down to any one specific thing. It’s one of the things I love about the city.

MF: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you know any musicians in Chicago?

MF: Well, Chris Corsano is there, right?

Yes! He lives there now. I see him around a lot.

MF: I learned about this cellist, Dorothy Carlos.

She’s one of my best friends!

MF: Okay, cool! I learned about her and I heard a lot of her stuff. When I find a cellist, I always try to look. And it’s so crazy how everyone has a very particular approach, you know? She has a very particular, unique approach.

I’m very biased, but I think she’s just brilliant. I loved her new album.

MF: Yeah, I just saw that she released it. I’d love to listen to it, but I haven’t heard it yet.

I’d highly recommend it.

MF: Who else from Chicago… my friend Jacob Wick. He’s from Chicago, but he’s not there anymore. He’s on this record, actually.

Yeah, the most recent one?

MF: Yeah, yeah. He played the trumpet on that, and I’ve played on his records.

I really like that one you played on last year, Something in Your Eyes. I don’t think I know him personally, but he’s a great musician.

MF: Is Hausu Mountain based in Chicago?

Yes!

MF: That is one of my favorite record labels. They are so weird. I like that.

They’re insane.

MF: When I went to Chicago I went to Elastic Arts and saw some improvisation.

Oh yeah, I’m there all the time. That’s the spot.

MF: You must have a tight-knit community there, right?

Very much so. So, I read that you originally wanted to play saxophone, but couldn’t due to bronchitis.

MF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had chronic rhinitis, whatever it is, and when I was a kid, it was very, very bad. Like, blegh [laughs]. But I’m happy I chose an instrument I can sing and play at the same time.

I love the story you’ve told a few times about how your dad randomly bought you a Ligeti CD, not knowing what it was, just because it had cello on it. It seems like you were brought into this world of weird and freaky music almost by a twist of fate.

MF: I was very young when he came home with that. I mean, he bought it in an airport. That was very weird that you could find Ligeti in an airport.

HT: Was it like the really weird shit of Ligeti?

MF: It was a cello sonata. The first movement is very iconic. I heard the first movement and it was my favorite. The second and third, even if I was a kid, I think I already had my brain a little squared up.

And I guess later I would meet Fernando, my friend in Guatemala who I would share music with, anyways. My approach with the internet was very, very slow. I was using last.fm and stuff. I was not a soulseek person, I was more of a limewire person.

I’ve become a soulseek person in the past ten years or so.

MF: We love it. We love it!

That’s where all the good stuff is.

[We pause as she talks to her tour manager]

What got you into improvised music?

MF: My learning of the instrument was very technical, you know? And it’s nice. You get acquainted with the instrument. But my education in the academy was very based around reading. There was very little about creation and exploration. Like, what would Mabe play?

But then I became a teenager, and I loved to see bands play, and I was like “well, I don’t play guitar, but I play the cello. What am I going to do like that?” And I started to kind of discover myself through creating my own sounds from very standard, traditional things. Then I got very much into finding songs whenever you play with a band. And then, I went to a residency in Mexico organized by the Getty Institute, and I met Julian Bonequi, who is a noise artist from Mexico. He and I started to talk about music, and he was like “look at this girl!” And he showed me a video of Okkyung Lee playing.

Ah yes, I love her.

MF: This video, it was just a close up of her bow only. You don’t see her fingers, you only see her bow. And I went crazy. I remembered the Ligeti, I remembered so many things, because I had been in a quartet of cellos, playing contemporary music or whatever. But, like… her spirit was so much punk, and so free, you know? I was like, “what is this?”

Six months later, I decided to move to Mexico. First, it was only three months to record an album, and I ended up staying. And when I went, the only concerts I remembered that I was pretty excited to see were improvisation concerts. Even though, whenever I saw it, I felt like I couldn’t do that, because I would feel that I’m total bullshit. Like, how do you walk yourself into that plane without feeling like you’re lying to yourself? I always think about those things.

Yeah, I feel like with a lot of the best improvisers it really feels like their practice is an extension of their personality and individuality, and making it work with other personalities.

MF: And you can even tell, right? You can tell about the culture and where they’re coming from, because a city definitely interferes. There was a moment when I was very curious as to what the difference is between a city like Mexico City versus a city like, I don’t know, Berlin. You can see there’s this influence in the way or mood of the improvisation. For example, when I went to Melbourne, I said I wanted to go to a free improvisation centre. There was a series of improvised music that happened every Tuesday. Actually, Sam from CS + Kreme was involved. Fuck, I’m trying to remember the name because it was really funny. But they did it every Tuesday, and the improvisation was so funny. There was this guy holding a microphone, chewing, and of course nothing happened. You couldn’t hear anything.

FVW: It was kind of like Fluxus.

MF: It was like improvised with a stand up comedy thing. There was a guy calling someone on the phone and talking into the microphone.

I love that.

MF: It was so funny, and I had never seen anything like that. You never know how the culture or the individuality will factor into it. Especially now with the internet and everything. For me, with Mexico City, the chaos was implicit in every aspect of the city itself. There was a community of musicians that were playing something, and you never know how they influence each other. And because of that, I just started to meet a lot of people who were into improvised music, and I ended up improvising with some of them. I don’t go to that many concerts any more. I still go to Jazzorca sometimes, which is this legendary place owned by this very big name in free jazz in Mexico City, Germán Bringas. He released something on Smiling C.

I can’t stop thinking about the name of that series in Melbourne. Can I look it up?

Please do!

I have attention deficits.

As do I.

[laughs] All of us!

[checks phone] Make It Up Club! That’s the name.

But yeah, I would say that I am like a mixture of things, because I play very organized music as well, songs and stuff. I’ve grown to love the mixture of those things. Right now, I’m in an era where I feel very unsure of my quality as an improviser.

I know of a few improvising musicians who also work with song structures and use the studio as sort of an instrument. I know you’ve talked a lot about being really inspired by Talk Talk, and I know that their last couple of albums came together through lengthy jam sessions and a lot of editing in the studio.

MF: Yeah, yeah. Do you know Nick Zanca?

Not personally, but I know his music.

MF: He wrote something for Reverb that was like a full history on how Laughing Stock was recorded. It was beautiful, because he mentioned the name of the microphones, and I was like “no, I have to use this microphone!” He made a great text on that record, which is one of my favorites ever. And I know that they did that, and I consciously chose to do the same method, of improvising and editing a lot. The one before this most recent record, Se ve desde aquí, has a lot of that. So much improvisation and editing… The previous one was like that, but I think Se ve desde aquí is better, because we edited very minuciosamente. How do you say that in english? It was like, deep, a lot of detail.

I know Mark Hollis was a relentless perfectionist, and that the band would spend hours in the studio trying everything. Is that something you relate to at all?

MF: We go crazy. Every record I’ve made, we’ve grown more and more obsessively perfectionist, you know? Every time it’s a challenge, and there’s a lot of discipline. It’s not always fun. There’s a lot of sacrifice.

Miles Davis’ electric albums were made kind of similarly, with lots of longform jamming spliced together using tape editing techniques.

MF: I didn’t know that!

Yeah, his producer Teo Macero was using tape editing techniques that were influenced by early musique concrete and stuff like that. Talk Talk was definitely influenced by those albums, but they sound totally different. It’s like that music was transmuted into a wildly different context.

MF: It’s great to just let things be, and then you take your favorite parts. In music, or maybe even in a conversation, you’re not getting it out of context, you know? If you choose correctly and it sounds good, it’s super fun to use improvisation as a tool of creation. Like, recently, we were recording some cellos for one collaboration that I’m working on. We edited it a lot, and everything sounded out of context. So, it’s not so simple, right?

It’s an artform, you know? You have to think really seriously about it.

MF: Yeah, yeah.

I know you’ve avoided reverb and overdubs on recent records. Was that desire to get a more raw, dry sound informed by your experience with improvised music?

MF: I mean, I tried to avoid it, but I also break my own rules a lot. I try to give myself a limit. It’s like getting one smoke… [laughs]

The overdub thing was about getting this live sensation, and wanting to be able to play it live. I mean, the studio is so limitless that you have to be careful. You have to set yourself a vision. I like that, at least if it’s a very simple thing, you know? And the dry sound of bowing something… it’s kind of like trying to give a very kind of uncomfortable reality thing, because… when you look at someone, or you look at your face very close in the mirror… with a lot of close observation, it’s so real that you start to feel weird about it. So I feel like that is the kind of feeling that the reverbless voice was all about.

But now I’m thinking, what if we use reverb again? [laughs] You’re not married to anything, you know? You can do whatever you want.

I feel like your albums always have really interesting arrangements.

MF: Hector made a lot of the arrangements for the last record, with wind instruments and everything. He did a really beautiful part on the last song, inspired by… what song was it? Alice in Chains!

HT: [laughs] Oh yeah, that’s right.

How did you go about putting together the arrangements?

HT: Sometimes we think about the kind of instruments that we want to have. We go with the flow. Sometimes we try things that don’t work, sometimes we try things that do.

MF: I love the trumpet arrangement that Hector made for “Kravitz.” And he has something about whole-tone scales. He loves them. And he recently got very obsessed with Messiaen. Hector can do whatever he wants, he can go to whatever scale he wants. So he has his palette, I think that Hector’s palette is very particular.

How do you approach projects such as Titanic and Amor Muere, as opposed to projects under your own name?

MF: It’s different. Most of the songs on Titanic are made by Hector, you know? We started making Titanic because we were making a video for an organization in Guatemala that we were going to play live. We played a couple of songs, “Cielo falso” and “Balanza.” We created them kind of together, but then Hector took the little synth that we had, and he went to the room and he started to create all of these progressions and these lyrics, and I was like, “oh, let’s try this little thing.” And then it ended up being a record, and now we are recording Titanic 2.

Oh, wow.

MF: But yeah, it’s different. Different processes, I would say. I mean, 95% of the time Mabe Fratti starts with cello and me singing, writing the lyrics, etc. Titanic is more like Hector creating chord, progressions, lyrics, you know? Amor Muere is more about all of us getting together in the same room and creating music together.

I wouldn’t have guessed that the Titanic album started out as just synths and drum machines. I was kind of surprised to learn that. It sounds…

MF: … jazzy. [laughs]

Yeah, exactly!

MF: I had the monotribe, you know the monotribe?

Maybe. I’m not a big expert on gear.

MF: It’s like a small drum machine. It’s nice, I gave it to my friend as a gift, but… I won’t say I’ll repent, but sometimes I feel sorry, because he was my friend and he liked it. Anyways, it started with the drum kit. I created some bass lines to drum with and Hector would play the piano we had in the house. It’s very, very random. It started very drum machine-y. But because we love so much Talk Talk… you know, I learned from that article I read by Nick Zanca that Mark Hollis hated synthesizers.

[Her bandmates and I got momentarily sidetracked talking about Dexys Midnight Runners, who were playing on the loudspeakers]

MF: You got distracted by the music.

It happens to the best of us.

MF: [laughs] Yeah, so Mark Hollis didn’t like synthesizers that much. He liked live instruments. I think that we are always very inspired by Talk Talk. I never get tired of it.

It’s really a bottomless well of inspiration.

MF: I would say so.

I read that you’ve been influenced by old archival recordings from different parts of the world.

MF: Where did I say that?

I don’t know, I read it somewhere. [Editor’s note: I had read it in Treblezine]

MF: I was really into this recording of membranophone. It was something from the archive of Smithsonian Folkways. But I don’t know, I’m not the kind of person to be like “you have to listen to this or that.”

Yeah, Folkways was kind of what I was thinking there.

MF: I made a playlist for them.

Really?

MF: Yeah, I went really deep. I’m not an expert, though. Someone who is an expert on that kind of stuff is Gibrán Andrade, who plays drums with us. He was very, very obsessed with archival music, he knows a lot. Do you know Sam Wenc?

I’m not sure, no.

MF: He’s a pedal steel player. We saw him play this improvisation show with More Eaze in New York. I thought it was such a beautiful instrument and I looked up archival pedal steel music, and I found this album on Folkways that was specifically pedal steel music.

I don’t know if I know that one.

MF: There’s so much. It’s impossible to know everything. But yeah, I love steel pedal guitar. I really want to record it sometime. And I love that with the pedals, you can change the whole note of the strings. It’s like a harp.

You guys played on that Phét Phét Phét album with Jarrett Gilgore, and I know Susan Alcorn was also on that album. Did you ever meet?

MF: No, I never met her. She was a great influence on Sam Wenc. Did you ever see her play live?

No, I didn’t, and I’m really sad about it. She played DC a lot but never when I was in town.

MF: She was an icon for the steel pedal guitar.

Absolutely. She totally expanded the instrument.

MF: It’s so rich! People have to do stuff with that! I want to do something with the steel pedal guitar. It’s because of the glissandos, I love glissandos.

On a very different topic, I saw that you opened for Autechre at the Unsound festival. What was that like?

MF: It was crazy, because they are hyper electronic. One of the things that the Unsound people do is that they create a special experience, specifically for the festival, in collaboration with Polish artists. In this case it was very special because we got to choose the instruments. We took flute, three french horns and a trumpet. It was beautiful.

So there it was a more electroacoustic - or mostly acoustic - than electronic experience, next to Autechre which was a full lights out experience. So I think it was nice to create that contrast. It was very special to share stages with such amazing artists. Because of Unsound, we also opened for Sunn O))).

Oh, really?

MF: Yeah, in New York at the Lincoln Center.

Who are some of your other favorite musicians that you’ve gotten to open for or work with?

MF: I played cello on a couple of tracks by Oneohtrix Point Never.

That’s right!

MF: That was beautiful. I’m a very big fan of his.

Is that on the most recent album?

MF: He made a show, and we played on the track “Animals” and one of the songs from R Plus Seven.

You’ve talked about being influenced by Scott Walker.

MF: Very distantly, but yeah. He’s one of those artists, like Talk Talk, that I never get tired of.

One of the things I’ve always liked about his music is that he was writing songs about subjects that no one else was writing songs about, like the CIA, the Prague Spring suppression, Bergman films, etc.

MF: Yeah, it’s crazy, right? I mean, english is not my first language. Whenever I hear music, I rarely pay attention to the lyrics, especially when people are talking very poetically. I’ll be listening to the music, and then I’ll learn about the lyrics and be like “woah, this is heavy.” Musically, I feel like he got more complex and innovative with time.

There’s really no one else who had that kind of career arc.

MF: Mark Hollis!

That’s true.

MF: Would Laurie Anderson be like that as well?

Yeah, I feel like she was always a weirdo though. I actually saw her at Big Ears last year.

MF: I know! And she played old stuff, right?

She played all the hits.

MF: Yeah, I saw videos!

She seems like a very lovely person.

MF: I feel like there’s a lot of expectations whenever she speaks because she speaks with such gravitas. Whenever I see an interview with her it instantly gets my attention. I’m like “Yes! You’re right!” She was saying something like “don’t call yourself an artist,” did you see that interview?

I’m not sure. What was she saying?

MF:... I forgot [laughs]. It was something like “don’t call yourself an artist, because it narrows things.” Look it up.

I will! Are there any artists you listen to that you think might surprise people?

MF: Hmm. I’ve been really liking these urban sounds from Latin America. Do you know CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso?

I don’t think so.

MF: They’re a duo and they make trap music. They’re like pop stars. At least in Latin America, they are hyper-big. They’re fun to listen to, I like them.

I’ll look it up.

MF: I don’t know if you would like it. [laughs]

You’d be surprised! I saw that you collaborated with Lucrecia Dalt recently, how did that come together?

MF: She wrote to me. I know her from the internet, we’ve met a couple of times. She’s also friends with a very good friend of mine. But she wrote to me, she was like “do you want to make a version of my song” and I was like “of course.”

She’s the best. I love her album with Aaron Dilloway.

MF: He’s one of the top guys. He’s so funny. I’ve seen all the videos, I love the chicken video he made for ESS.

Yeah, I saw him play a set with the comedian Sarah Sherman one time. It was like a guided meditation parody.

MF: I saw that! She was opening for OPN and she did that bit.

Well, I’m really looking forward to seeing you play tomorrow. I also heard you’re coming to Chicago soon?

MF: Yeah, we’re excited but we’re very intimidated - I mean, me specifically, I’m particularly intimidated by those first times headlining shows in the US because no one knows who you are [laughs].

People know who you are!

MF: Some people. You just want to make it work a little bit financially [laughs]. Do you like Empty Bottle?

It’s a great spot. I’ve seen a lot of great performances there. The one thing I’ll say is that people talk sometimes during performances there, because there’s a bar and everything. But I have faith that people will get their shit together.

MF: Who knows! It’s fine, I let that go.