Weekly Music Roundup: Fantastic Negrito and Sting, Mabe Fratti, Buscabulla
This week, Fantastic Negrito and Sting collaborate, and returns for rapper Heems and Puerto Rican indie duo Buscabulla. Also, cellist and composer Mabe Fratti, Bryce Dessner, and Tuareg guitar group Etran de L’Air.
Fantastic Negrito’s New Song Features Sting
Oakland blues singer and songwriter Fantastic Negrito has just released a song called “Undefeated Eyes,” a smoldering soul track that features guest vocals by Sting. Not sure why the song has languished in Negrito’s vaults since it was recorded in early 2020, but it’s good to hear the two distinctive voices playing nicely together. And his band, as ever, keeps things at a steady simmer.
Mabe Fratti Reaches New Heights, And Audiences
Singer and cellist Mabe Fratti has been an important part of the bustling Mexico City music scene. Now, her new album Sentir Que No Sabes (Feel Like You Don’t Know) has inspired glowing reviews and features in the New York Times, The Guardian, Pitchfork, and more. Fratti’s music has always walked a fine line between her experimental and avant-garde leanings on the one hand, and what seems to be an innate pop sensibility on the other. With each album, her weaving of the two has become more organic and effective, and the new record is both accessible yet somehow still full of textures that defy categorization, and in some cases, identification. Album closer “Angel Nuevo” has her plucked cello sketching a steady bass line, although later bowed cello lines come in to add a lilting support to her vocals. At various points, a starlit electronic sound colors the song’s background, and there’s also a moment with some distant backing vocal cries that sounds as if Peter Gabriel had dropped in to help produce the track. (He didn’t – the album was produced by Fratti and her partner Hector Tosta, with whom she did last year’s album as the duo Titanic.) It’s somehow eerie and otherworldly while still feeling intimate and inviting.
Heems And Vijay Iyer Collaborate on Haunting New Track “Manto”
Rapper Heems (Himanshu Suri, formerly of Das Racist and half of Swet Shop Boys) has had a super productive year. His upcoming Veena LP, due on August 23, will be his second full length record of 2024. He’s just released a single from the album called “Manto,” named after the gifted but ill-starred Pakistani writer of the 20th century who wrote about the chaos caused by the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The inherited trauma of that event echoes through Heems’s song, and through the video, which features the women in his family, including his aunts who represent the last generation to live through Partition. Heems is a rapper with range – he can be aggressive, manic, or comic; here his delivery is relatively restrained – urgent but unhurried. And the music, produced by Sid Vashi, features some beautifully expressive playing from pianist/composer Vijay Iyer. In fact, the last half of the song is essentially instrumental, although Iyer’s piano is haunted by echoing voices of the past.
Buscabulla Release First New Song In Four Years
The new single “11:11” is the first music we’ve heard from Buscabulla since their 2020 LP Regresa, but it’s not like they’ve been taking it easy. The Puerto Rican indie pop duo, formerly based in Brooklyn, collaborated with the chart-busting Bad Bunny on the song “Andrea” and toured with that Puerto Rican superstar. But it’s good to have them back, and “11:11” is a song about recognizing that time isn’t going to wait for you to figure out what you want. The song has a steady dance beat (with a merengue rhythm lurking beneath it) and the electropop sound that has become their trademark.
100% Sahara Guitar Music From Etran De L’Air
The Tuareg guitar band Etran de L’Air (a mixed Tamasheq-French name that means “Stars of the Air”) hails from Niger, which is home to some of the biggest names in Tuareg music (including Bombino and Mdou Moctar). This band of brothers has released the first song from the upcoming album 100% Sahara Guitar. It’s called “Ighre Massina,” a song of thanks to the Creator for her (yes, that’s the pronoun they use) gift of love. The three voices sing in unison, but behind them, it sounds like two different sets of rhythms going at the same time, as their drummer plays the rolling triplets of Tuareg music over the steady 4/4 of the guitars.
The full album comes out on September 6.
The National’s Bryce Dessner Releases Classical Guitar Solo “Walls”
All during his time with the top-shelf indie-rock band The National, guitarist Bryce Dessner has led a double life as both a successful rock musician and an in-demand classical composer. His new single, “Walls,” is from his upcoming album (on Sony Classical) called Solos. These are solo works for piano, violin, percussion, and other instruments, and not surprisingly, Dessner’s own instrument, the guitar, gets a couple of slots on the album. “Walls” was originally written for the film The Two Popes, and is played on the nylon-string classical guitar. It has arpeggiated patterns reminiscent of famous classical pieces like “Asturias” by Isaac Albeniz, with a simple, elegant melody running over the top.
