Asthmatic Kitty

Helado Negro Is the Carl Sandburg of Spanish Electronic Pop Music

By Emily Gogolak Fri., Mar. 22 2013 at 5:10 PM
Categories: Asthmatic Kitty, Helado Negro

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On a recent morning in Crown Heights, we met Roberto Carlos Lange, the Brooklyn by way of Miami master who makes music under the moniker Helado Negro and whose latest album, Invisible Life, was released on Asthmatic Kitty earlier this month. It's his most collaborative album to date -- with appearances by Devendra Banhart, Bear in Heaven's Jon Philpot, Mouse on Mars' Jan St. Werner, Juliana Barwick, and Liz Janes, among others -- and it is first to feature him singing in English. Wearing a light blue and brown tie-dyed t-shirt and his trademark enormous afro tied back in a bun, Lange is warm and witty, has a stoner-y laugh, and when you talk to him you can tell his head is a little bit in the clouds, but in a good way. We hung out in the studio of his walk-up on Eastern Parkway and talked about Miami, what "Alt-Latino" does (or doesn't) mean, and making music in foreign tongues.

Helado Negro performs at Glasslands Gallery in Williamsburg on Sunday night, with a DJ Set by Devendra Banhart.

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Yes In My Backyard

Download: Epstein's Post-Punky Beach Jam "Seashells & Starfish"

By Christopher Weingarten Thu., Jun. 9 2011 at 8:00 AM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, Epstein, Featured, Helado Negro, MP3, New Yorkers, Yes In My Backyard

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Plenty of YIMBY pixels have already been spilled on Roberto Carlos Lange, whose project Helado Negro greeted us two years ago as a breezy summertime treat. His alter-alter-ego Epstein keeps HN's hazy asphalt steam heat, but trades the fluttering guitars for trunk-rattling 808s, and his vulnerable warble for vinyl crackle. Epstein turns Lange's love of hip-hop—birthed on Boogie Down Productions and Buffy the Human Beat Box—into a reverb-soaked, psychedelic throb. His recent album Sealess Sea (out now via Asthmatic Kitty) is built on record loops filtered through his trusty MPC—he describes his composition style as "grab a random stack and see what could get built." But the record's bubbly, gauzy feel feels more at home with contemporary loop-mutants like Panda Bear or Black Moth Super Rainbow. The humid, soupy drums on "Seashells & Starfish" are so heavily distended that the whole piece rolls over into post-punk territory, a gorgeous place where This Heat meets Prefuse 73.

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Interview

Q&A: Helado Negro's Roberto Carlos Lange on "The Message," Gigantic Floppy Discs, and the Album He's Making with Julianna Barwick

By Andrew Stout Tue., May 10 2011 at 9:00 AM
Categories: Andrew Stout, Helado Negro, Interview

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First there's the owl; then there's the enormous afro. The sight of the two in close proximity means you've likely entered Roberto Carlos Lange's domain, whether it be through the front door of his Brooklyn home or by hearing one of the dozens of sound sculptures and animated films he's completed in little more than a half-decade. I rang him one recent overcast morning to talk about Canta Lechuza, the album of pop songs he's recorded as Helado Negro (or "Black Ice Cream" in Spanish), which is out today on Asthmatic Kitty. Helado Negro's music is built upon a foundation of blips and bleeps over which Lange croons in Spanish. Each of the album's tracks presents a compelling concentration of the rich, off-register world he's constructed to date.

I first heard about you a couple of years ago, when I saw a kinetic sculpture of yours called "The Message."

That was 2007 and it was something I did with David Ellis. At the time, he had been working on a variation on this idea of kinetic musical found sculptures. They were pretty different from what he and I started doing. "The Message" was something he thought of in terms of making a typewriter automatically type the lyrics to a song--in this case the famous Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five song--within the beat and cadence of the original recording.

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Christopher R. Weingarten

Yes In My Backyard: Download Helado Negro's "Deja"

By Christopher Weingarten Tue., Sep. 15 2009 at 12:30 PM
Categories: Christopher R. Weingarten, Featured, Helado Negro, MP3, Yes In My Backyard

Yes In My Backyard is a semiweekly column showcasing MP3s from new and emerging local talent.

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Visual artist and sound sculptor Roberto Carlos Lange, a.k.a. Helado Negro, is a sponge that soaks up nothing but the breeziest sounds. Summertime hip-hop jams, Tropicalia, and '80s New York club bangers are all present on his debut album Awe Owe (Asthmatic Kitty). But Lange inverts the textures of sunny pop from joy to melancholy, downtuning his ecstatic bursts until they've become introspective, citywise apartment pop. Think of him as a Tom Ze in a post-Madlib universe, equal parts mesmerizing loops, confounding gurgles, and killer hooks. Album closer "Deja" treats acoustic strums as dull thunderclaps, echoing into hypnotic bliss (and woodwinds!) until it floats on like some rainy day version of Os Mutantes. Or maybe Deerhunter en espanol.

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