Video: Helado Negro, “Dahum”
- story Sam Hockley-Smith
Imagine the brainstorming session for this Helado Negro video. It was probably like, “Hey you know those shirts that have an imprint of Jimi Hendrix’s face on them? The ones that are basically a stencil sort of like the Che graphic tee, which makes you think REVOLUTIONARY. What if we did that technique, only on video and with a guy that people aren’t really that familiar with yet? And then what if—just because—we threw in a column of blue water/paint and a bunch of giant pink jellyfish pulsing through the air in time with an accordion?” Sounds fine to us! (via MBV)
Freeload: Roberto Lange Elastic Island Mix
- story THE FADER
We posted a track from Roberto Lange aka Helado Negro’s Asthmatic Kitty debut album and speculated on the Prefuse 73 collaborator’s eclectic music taste. Turns out we were right, as evidenced by this whispy mix he cooked up. Lange’s thoughts on time, space and music are below and track list is after the jump.
Living in New York, a lot of things stack up — time, money, responsibilities, and kinda like the elastic in your underwear, you can stretch it out too much if you take on too much weight. So these songs are like the in-and-out of bloated lifestyles or the trim streamlined focused mindsets that hustle and grind hard here. I think the song “We’ve Had Enough” has the energy and the message of the over all theme. The ever expanding and contracting life of being human and the only thing you can look at is all the stretch marks left after words. Jaytram brought in the song “Life of Illusion” this song speaks to me just seeing everyone here in NY from different countries and different states chasing something. I guess not to get too deep but the life of illusion kinda says it. The last song “It’ll never happen again” is like the end of the cycle where we end up after we are standing there trying to figure out how all this stuff happened and looking forward with our head up saying it’ll never happen again. This mix is a vehicle of positivity and music with a common theme, kinda like don’t despair, today is another day to do something good and something new.
Download: Roberto Lange + Jaytram Elastic Island
Freeload: Helado Negro, “Deja” MP3
- story THE FADER
The music we love is so often noisy that sometimes we need a song that strums along, like lemon sorbet after a heavy meal. So we enjoyed getting this track from Helado Negro, which places a premium on prettiness. A side project from Brooklyn-by-way-of-Florida producer Roberto Carlos Lange, who’s worked with Prefuse 73 and School of Seven Bells, “Deja” bubbles with watery echos, soft clarinets and guitars, and Lange’s quiet harmonies. Helado Negro is what Gal Costa might sound like if she spent the past decade listening to Animal Collective, French electronica, and a bit of hip-hop—which it sounds like Lange has.
Download: Helado Negro, “Deja”
