Bill Orcutt & Mabe Fratti – Almost Waking

The news of a Bill Orcutt collaboration always carries a certain logic. He finds a rhythm with drummers, noise guitarists, looped gospel records, turning each encounter into something that sounds only like himself. Mabe Fratti fits that pattern. The Mexico City cellist and singer first crossed his radar through a Quietus interview where she talked about his music, and he got in touch. Over most of a year, the two traded files between San Francisco and Mexico City, building what became the eight-track album Almost Waking.

Fratti and Orcutt have both worked with drummer Chris Corsano, but their shared improvisational language runs deeper. The pieces on Almost Waking lean into chamber-folk, shaped by a remote process that never feels remote. Fratti’s cello brings melody and weight, Orcutt’s guitar darts around the edges. Most of the record is instrumental, and that’s where some of the most direct material lives. “Forced & Forced & Forced” rides a folk lilt that nearly turns into a rock song, Fratti’s distorted cello cutting through like a guitar solo as the track escalates. “The Heaven of Our Misery” has a haunted lope and a chorus driven by her cello line, with Orcutt’s notes flickering in the high end.

Fratti sings on a few tracks, but the album’s hooks don’t depend on voices. “Steps of the Sun” layers two players into a sound that feels bigger than the sum. Orcutt’s past year included the lovely How to Rescue Things, reworking gospel strings into his own language. Almost Waking extends that impulse toward melody, now balanced against Fratti’s sense of structure. It’s a record that doesn’t announce its beauty so much as let it settle in, phrase by phrase.