Today, Helado Negro – the moniker of Roberto Carlos Lange – shares a second track from his forthcoming new album PHASOR (out 9 February 2024). Built around a chopped and sequenced guitar line, ‘I Just Want To Wake Up With You’ is a languid and fuzzy love song, an ode to domestic life, and to comfort and health. As the title suggests, it’s about waking up with the one you love, resting your voice in their arms. The song is accompanied by a joyously psychotropic official video directed by Lange.
Helado Negro – ‘I Just Want To Wake Up With You’
Taken from Lange’s eighth full-length Helado Negro album, ‘I Just Want To Wake Up With You’ follows the Spanish language single ‘LFO’, a song written in tribute to both Fender amp-builder Lupe Lopez and minimalist composer and sonic meditation practitioner Pauline Oliveros (LFO means Lupe Finds Olivero).
Some of the seeds for PHASOR were planted in 2019 on Lange’s 39th birthday after a 5-hour visit to Salvatore Matirano’s SAL MAR machine at the University of Illinois. A complex synthesizer that creates music generatively with a vintage super computer brain and analog oscillators, it can create an infinite amount of possibilities in sound sequences. The SAL MAR experience became the bedrock for PHASOR. It taught Lange more about himself and became central to his creative process.
PHASOR is Lange’s tightest collection—deep, atmospheric, meticulously executed. It’s aligned with 2019’s This Is How You Smile which found him incorporating more upfront drums and bass and focused grooves. His 2021 album, Far In, focused on being in quarantine—talking to your mother through Zoom instead of across a room. PHASOR, in turn, is a homage to going outside again. It’s a returning-to-life record, remembering what the sun feels like and letting it warm your skin.
After Far In, Lange relocated to Asheville, North Carolina and the landscape around him was essential to PHASOR —the crystalline mountains dotted with mica, wild blueberry bushes, and inky dirt surface constantly. He made the collection at his studio, across the hall from the studio of his wife, his frequent collaborator Kristi Sword, who created the album art drawings for PHASOR.
PHASOR will be available digitally and on CD, standard black vinyl and translucent vinyl (4AD Webstore + UK Indie exclusive) on 9 February 2024. To pre-order or for more information head HERE.
Helado Negro – PHASOR
9 February 2024
4AD 0610
Tracklist
- LFO
- I Just Want to Wake Up With You
- Best For You and Me
- Colores Del Mar
- Echo Tricks Me
- Out There
- Flores
- Wish You Could Be Here
- Es Una Fantasia
ABOUT HELADO NEGRO
Born in South Florida in 1980 to Ecuadorian immigrant parents, Roberto Carlos Lange stitches together memories, impressions, and atmospheres to make detailed dreamscapes as Helado Negro. He produces, engineers, and mixes his own songs, literally creating and populating his own sonic world. Lange has a degree in Computer Art and Animation from Savannah College of Art and Design and works extensively with video, sculpture, sound, and performance. He brings that toolbox to whatever he makes, and there’s a seeming effortlessness to the complexity. His songs are awash with vibrant melodies, sharp lyrical vignettes, and subtle, even whispered hooks. Since his 2009 debut, Awe Owe, across multiple projects and collaborations, through his breakthrough records, 2016’s Private Energy and 2019’s This Is How You Smile, and to 2021’s Far In, Lange’s work continues to move past easy genre assignments. Showcasing that interest in open-ended multi-disciplinarity, in 2022, he and his wife, the artist Kristi Sword, created the multi-disciplinary exhibition, Kite Symphony, with Ballroom Marfa—it was a collection of impressionistic installations, drawings and sound pieces that encourages listeners to “open their ears to the sky, the sound of cacti, and the feeling of the wind on their skin.” Lange has been awarded a United States Artist fellowship and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant. He lives in Asheville, NC.
HELADO NEGRO ONLINE:
heladonegro.com
Instagram + Twitter: @heladonegro
Facebook: @heladonegro
