Mabe Fratti has released a new song, ‘En Medio’, taken from her upcoming album Será que ahora podremos entendernos? The track arrives alongside an accompanying video directed Thania Díaz and Moisés Méndez and filmed at Mexico City’s sprawling Xaltepec Volcano. Check it out below.
“This song is very different from the rest in that it has a clear and simple tempo set by a drum machine and the vocal production is a lot more spatial in contrast to others,” Fratti explained in a press release. “The lyrics address words we use to compromise ourselves, and how they seem to predetermine what plays out in some ways, when there are many chaotic things happening ‘in between’ (‘en medio’). The song was co-produced with Hugo Quezada, a member of the band Exploded View, in his studio ‘Progreso Nacional.'”
Of the video, Mendez said:
‘En Medio’ was filmed in Parque Xalli, or Volcano Xaltepec also known as Calabacitas (but we started calling it “Mars” as we were making the video). It’s a very big park with red soil and a factory here in Mexico City which I had just seen from afar, but not really visited until we started to think about making the video.
We wanted to create something that would attract the eye and not really focus on being conceptual. I took some shots of factories near my house. When shooting in one of the factories we captured some dogs we saw on the quarry, and from this, other spaces we found. As we started shooting, more ideas came to our minds: like painting a sky and burning it. Artists Ana Paula Rodríguez and Melona Rivas helped with the painting, and we started to play around with fire. This was slightly dangerous, there were a few times we nearly burnt ourselves, there’s a photo somewhere of Mabe not realising she was holding a burning bottle of gasoline in her hand. We also took some shots from my archive. Mabe had a special connection with a shot in which a truck is in flames. I also captured spaces such as some other factories in the industrial zone of Vallejo and Azapotzalco.
It was a very beautiful process, we were all creating and exchanging ideas as we created the video, Mabe also was very honest about all our ideas and we all ended up exploring new ways of making new things that we ended up loving. I love the song and the name ‘En Medio’, I felt really identified. It’s like a very Gemini’s name for a song.
Será que ahora podremos entendernos? is out June 25 via Unheard of Hope. Previsouly, Fratti shared the claire rousay-featuring single ‘Hacia el Vacío’.