Helado Negro's newest release, Island Universe Story, will take you on quite the mental journey that will launch at your ears. You could call the sounds on it experimental easy listening. It's not at all boring, just easy to listen to. It's very beautiful and actually experimental. It's not in-your-face, but you could definitely find a place and time to dance to it. Best of all, the lyrics are in Spanish.
Otherwise known as Roberto Lange, the musician was bred right here in Davie and currently resides in Brooklyn. His newest work is an "infinite series," so though this is the first, it's not the last. How many there will be total is a mystery.
"The EP series is an ongoing thought cycle where it's allowing me to have my own soundboard to throw things at and see how it fits into a larger context over time with all of the Helado Negro work," Lange says. "There is no answer to how many EPs there will be... infinite, variable, and unforeseen." That's a lot. This first is being released on Asthmatic Kitty today.
The series was inspired by the following Aldous Huxley quote: We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies -- all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes.Lange says of the words, "It struck a chord with me only in that it reinforced things I believed in. But I'm not good with finding words to describe in a simple way complex thoughts." Luckily, he's got music to bring all of this depth to the surface.
"This music was a product of experimentation and normal haphazard occurrences in my studio that I recorded. But instead of dissecting them and trying to form them to fit a certain mold, I let them be what they are," he says of Island Universe Story's sound. "I was inspired by technology; I used a Teenage Engineering OP-1 synth to generate a lot of sounds and also 1/4-inch reel-to-reel Scully 280 tape machine and singing."
All of these ideas and tools worked in Lange's favor, allowing him to create a soundscape that explores more than just noises and words but a whole world that exists under the surface.
Purchase the album here -- you'll love it.
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