Mabe Fratti and Richard King (Travels Over Feeling) Chat About Arthur Russell

Richard King is the author of the new biography Travels Over Feeling: Arthur Russell, a Life; Mabe Fratti is a Guatemala-born, Mexico-based cellist and experimental artist, and fan of Arthur Russell. Both were in New York for BRIC’s Arthur Russell tribute event at Prospect Park, and they hopped on a Zoom call to catch up about the artist the afternoon before the show. Travels Over Feeling and Mabe’s new record, Sentir que no sabes, are both out now. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Richard King: I wanted to congratulate you on your new album.

Mabe Fratti: Oh, my — thanks! I’m very grateful for that. 

Richard: I’ve been listening to Arthur’s music far too much for the past, you know, four years, and it feels like his voice and the cello adapted to one another. I was wondering if you’ve arrived at a place with singing where the cello made a space for your own voice?

Mabe: That’s a good question. The fun fact of cello is it’s the same range as the human voice, so definitely I feel that it blends very well with the voice in general. It has the same kind of frequencies. Playing with the instrument so close to your body, I guess, also has an impact — even though Arthur played it in a very awkward position. 

Richard: [Laughs.]

Mabe: You know, standing with the cello almost in his belly. I’ve never tried that. But I just feel that I connect with the instrument, and I just go with the flow. The tone of the instrument feels very comfortable because of these fun facts. But while reading your book — I don’t remember who says it, that Arthur was trying to develop this singing that made his nose vibrate. I tried to do it, and that’s something that definitely makes that tough.

Richard: I might be making connections that are just coincidental, but it seemed like in some of your brass arrangements and with the percussion, there’s a hint of that New York downtown sound as well. 

Mabe: I worked with a producer and arranger [I. La Católica], and we were like, “We have to add some trumpets to this.” And he has this knowledge of harmony — he has his own color palette. I don’t even know where he got that from, but I was just like, “I like this one. Let’s put that one in.”

Richard: I can over theorize very easily, having spent too long listening to Arthur’s music. I hear it in everything. 

Mabe: Really, everywhere? I feel it too. I feel that everyone that listens to Arthur is like, “He is unclassifiable.” But after listening to him so much, maybe you have found hints in other music. Have you?

Richard: I have. I think I can hear a lot of Arthur in Blonde, the album by Frank Ocean. Particularly that song “Nights.” There’s that moment maybe two minutes in where it goes, “New beginnings… the sun’s going down,” where his voice sounds very like Arthur, and there’s a long chord in the middle of it that has the sort of thickness of a cello. There are people who write songs who’ve maybe heard a lot of Arthur’s music, and it’s quite a literal interpretation. And then I think there are people who have absorbed Arthur’s sound and the way he created space in the music. I would put someone like Frank Ocean in that bracket. But I can hear the influence more of his sound structure than anything else in a lot of music. 

So, how did you come across Arthur’s music? 

Mabe: I had a friend that was in art school, and we shared music all the time. He knew that I played cello, and he sent me Arthur’s music. The first song he sent was “This Is How We Walk On The Moon” — it was a YouTube link, and that link led me to another one and so on. For me, it was very special to listen to World of Echo. And Calling Out of Context, of course, was way later, but for me, it was great to find that there was a cello player that really revolutionized the sound in such a special way. With the cello — of course you can make chords if you pluck the strings, and we have a four note chord. But when you are playing mostly intervals or just one line, you can go very modal. I think he had that a lot. So that’s how I came across this music. It’s crazy — this art school friend really fed me with some good tunes. 

Richard: [Laughs.] That’s what art schools are for.

Mabe: That’s right!

Richard: It’s interesting, because probably the ultimate art school band from the US is Talking Heads, and for people who don’t know too much about Arthur, it’s often one of the links people make with him. I don’t know how strong a link it actually was, really. But going back to your point about the modal music — in the UK, the people who were responsible for bringing Arthur’s music back into public consciousness at the turn of this century were people who knew a lot about dance music. So it was songs like “Go Bang” and “Is It All Over My Face” and “Tell You Today” and “Wax the Van.” Hearing a cello in that context is really interesting, because sometimes the cello is playing what would have been a bassline in a dance song, but the fact it’s got a beat and it’s popular — it is dance music, but it’s also just completely its own music. And that’s to do with the fact Arthur was Arthur and he had his own, we could call it “genius.” But it’s also because it’s a cello and you just don’t hear a cello in that context very often. I was wondering what it was like as a cellist to hear a cello part in a place where you don’t normally hear them.

Mabe: It feels exciting, definitely. I’m all about these new textures. I really like to find weird sounds, to be surprised by weird combinations of sounds, or just a sound that you cannot describe. When I heard Arthur for the first time, he became King Arthur, you know? And the beats are so special as well. I always try to find out his equipment — why didn’t you put that in your book?

Richard: [Laughs.] It’s interesting, isn’t it? Because those beats, they just don’t sound dated. It’s like they could be made in a year’s time or five years’ time. I think he had an emulator, and maybe he had a DX7. I’m not sure.

Mabe: Oh, yeah, the DX7 I see in the pictures.

Richard: Yeah. But I think they sound that way because he would spend literally weeks on the same drum pattern. So they sound that way only partly because of the technology. They sound that way because of what was going on in his head, and that’s what makes them what they are.

Mabe: Yeah. That’s amazing. I mean, with no computer and no looking at how to draw the beat or anything…. He was all listening, and the beats are amazing. And what about the pedals? Do you know what happened with his equipment? 

Richard: Well, Tom [Lee, Arthur’s partner] was very generous. He kept some of it, but he gave some of it to Arthur’s collaborators. Tom was very, very generous with Arthur’s equipment.

Mabe: I love all the love that is portrayed in the book, with all of Tom’s interventions and his letters and pictures.

Richard: Yeah. I think it’s no coincidence that Arthur’s creativity went through the roof once he was with Tom. I think he gave him so much stability, and he was so generous with doing the artwork and supporting them financially. And to the tragedy of Arthur dying young, there is a happy ending, in a way, because Tom became part of Arthur’s family. He lives near Arthur’s sister now; Arthur’s mother passed away at Christmas last year, but he saw her regularly. He was effectively their brother, their son-in-law. So that love you’re talking about between Tom and Arthur, it endured and endures still between Tom being a member of that family. I think that’s such an extraordinary thing that they got closer and closer over time, because I think the bond between Tom and Arthur was so strong. And it’s down to Tom that we have all this material now. Not only did Arthur keep hold of absolutely everything in a slightly strange way, Tom wouldn’t just get rid of it. He thought, “Well, one day this might make sense,” and here we are.

Mabe: Exactly. When you first saw the archive — it’s in the New York Public Library, right?

Richard: Yes, at Lincoln Center. 

Mabe: OK, yeah. I might go!

Richard: Yeah, you should go. You have to book yourself in and send some emails, but… Arthur’s archive, from what I gather, the people who go and visit it are among the youngest people who visit the New York Public Library archive. So I think that means a lot to the people at the library. They realize they have something that’s of value not just to academics or retired people, but to young people, creative people in the middle of their career. And that’s quite rare for an archive to be the source not of a historical thing, but of an active, living, breathing thing. 

Mabe: Yeah. There’s a lot of stuff that hasn’t been heard, right? Is that in the archive?

Richard: I think it’s slightly complicated getting hold of all that. Often, understandably, people say, “Is there anything yet to come out?” And I think there’s going to be another live recording released. I don’t know if you’ve heard the live recordings — some of them are absolutely amazing. There’s some on the Bandcamp. There’s one recording from 1985 that was live at Roulette; it’s Arthur, Elodie Lauten, and Peter Zummo, and it’s really, really, really good.

Mabe: I’ll check it out.

Richard: Yeah. What I like about the live recordings is sometimes they really get into a groove, and you can kind of hear all of Arthur’s music happening at once. It starts off with the song with him singing with the cello, and then the keyboard comes in, and Peter Zummo — his trombone and the cello, because they both play quite low notes, kind of almost become a rhythm section. They get a groove going, and there are flashes in some of the live recordings where you can hear everything Arthur did happening at once, and it’s just three people on stage. It’s amazing.

Mabe: Amazing. 

Richard: Tell me more about your relationship with Arthur. Because you’re of the generation that’s really kind of claimed Arthur, in a way, as your own. Does he feel like a secret? Or does he feel like, because he wasn’t well known in his lifetime, that that somehow makes him more interesting?

Mabe: I think that he’s not a secret anymore. I think happily, he is getting the well-deserved recognition. But at first when Carlos [Mabe’s friend] sent it to me, it didn’t have as much recognition as it has now. I think a few years later, there was this compilation that had a lot of very known artists doing covers, like Devendra Banhart — that compilation with the hat on the cover. I believe maybe that was the moment that it became super, super popular. 

It’s funny that you said that we call him our own. It feels kind of like that. He’s quite contemporary, sound-wise, because of the way that he would digest all the sounds and make this very complex combinations of genres into something that is unclassifiable. That’s maybe some something that feels super contemporary, because genres are becoming less and less of a thing. Do you feel that?

Richard: Yeah, completely. I think that’s such an interesting point about genre, because when Arthur’s music became more well known about 20 years ago, people could get hold of a lot of Arthur’s work, when file sharing was really popular. That kind of pre-Spotify era when people could get things on Mediafire or LimeWire or wherever. There’s no context or mediation and there’s no one curating anything — there’s just, “Here’s a big dump of this extraordinary music.” I think if you’re talking about MP3s at that time, obviously people would listen on computers, but I think also it was the kind of high watermark of the iPod and of shuffle, and listening like that completely reduced the need for genres. Today, for good or bad, on Spotify there’ll be like, “Decaf Macchiato 11 AM” playlists, or “Psychedelic Beach House in Nova Scotia,” “Just As The Sun Is Setting Folk,” or whatever.

Mabe: [Laughs.] Yes.

Richard: It’s gone beyond genre to some very weird place now. But when Arthur’s music came out, I think people who’d maybe just got hold of it by whatever means put it on their iPod and they were listening to it through headphones. And of course, Arthur lived in his headphones… So, you’re absolutely right: Genre and Arthur were never a combination that worked. And that’s probably why he wasn’t as successful as he wished he’d been, because he didn’t just stick to one thing. But he basically is part of the education we’ve all had that genres just aren’t necessary.

Mabe: Do you think that Arthur wanted to make pop music? Because that could be a genre, but it’s so broad.

Richard: I think he wanted to be successful. I don’t think he wanted to be a tortured genius who didn’t have success. Because in their own way, the dance floor records were successful. I mean, he got ripped off and he didn’t get accounted to properly — it was kind of the Wild West, that scene at the time, with bootlegs and lord knows what else. But even when he knew he wasn’t well and he was dying, he was trying to work with people who would remix his material and make it more commercial. It’s interesting because when he was in a band, The Necessaries, I think it’s fair to say his heart wasn’t quite in it. That was something that definitely wanted to be successful and pop and new wave, and it was Warner Brothers, and it just didn’t work. There are reasons for it not working; maybe it missed the moment when that music was super popular and it sounded like it was trying to be successful. I don’t know… So, yes, he wanted to be successful, but I think he wanted to be successful as Arthur Russell.

Let me finish by asking about your music. Listening to your new record, it sounds to me like you’re not bothered by genre either.

Mabe: It’s something that I don’t think too much about. There’s something about not having direct references that makes me feel very at peace when I am creative — like not thinking about anything like [another] song. But I can think about something more abstract and microscopic, and I think that has helped me to be a little bit free. But then for example, on this record, that first song is super rock & roll with the voice. I was thinking of Lenny Kravitz, even if it’s not like Lenny Kravitz. There’s always these little glimpses of the past, which is fine. I think there’s a lot of things that still can have names, but for me it’s like an accumulation of experiences and having fun with sound in general, you know? 

Richard: Right. Sounds like you’ve had a lot of fun with sound on that record. I’m really enjoying your album a lot.

Mabe: I’m happy to hear! Are you going to the show tonight?

Richard: Yeah, I am. I’ll be there and I’m going to say a few words as well. 

Mabe: Beautiful. 

Richard: Are you coming tonight? Are you in New York?

Mabe: I am! I hope it doesn’t rain too much. I hope it’s a little rain — just a little bit.

(Photo Credit: The Arthur Russell Papers)