Phasor soothes the soul with breezy electronics.
Phasor is the best record of the year so far and I will die on this hill.
I don’t blame you if you haven’t heard Helado Negro’s latest yet. It’s hard to keep up when there are several thousand lifetimes of musical recordings to listen to. More than ever, musicians, like most of us (unfortunately), need to market themselves if they want to be noticed and make a living.
The lucky few, and/or those with the resources, can have an algorithm approximate their soul and break down their music into quantifiable qualities to be aggregated into a Spotify playlist with other people’s music that has similar combinations of tempo, key, melody, timbre, etc.. Maybe that hip new bar will shuffle into their song and a few people will Shazam it.
Or a musician can go the old school route with a press release to market and enumerate their many skills; hoping to signify their worthiness for your ears. Although titles such as producer, singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, multimedia artist, etc have less weight when seemingly everyone is all of these things. Nonetheless, it makes it all the more rewarding to encounter a musician who is all of those things.
So what does all this relentless cynicism have to do with Helado Negro? Well, his music is the antidote for it.
With all the myopic and belligerent ways we choose to wield modern technology, Phasor is a vital reminder of the beautiful things it can make too. Roberto Carlos Lange calls his eighth record “an homage to going outside again. It’s a returning-to-life record, remembering what the sun feels like and letting it warm your skin.”
Helado Negro’s sound is gentle, intimate, and profoundly human, so it may surprise you it’s largely informed Lange’s decades within the world of digital art and experimental electronic music. He’s a Savannah College of the Arts graduate in computer art and sound design—something you can see in the stylish music videos he directs himself. And his musical life first came to most of our ears via Savath and Savalas, one of many side projects of experimental hip-hop producer, Guillermo Scott Heron (best known as Prefuse 73).
Yet, despite what one may assume, Phasor is groovy, breezy, and an incredibly accessible record.
It lands between his heartfelt electronic folk masterpiece, This is How You Smile, and the soothing ambient soundscapes of Far In. There is tranquility in the complexity as tender melodies dance with delicately funky grooves, and it does indeed feel like the sun warming your skin for the first time in a long time.
Maybe it’s fair to be unsettled by our trajectory alongside modern technology, but Lange’s art is kindred to musicians like Laraaji and Pauline Oliveros—legendary innovators and technophiles whose mastery of electronic music showed us how technology can also be used to dream of a brighter, more compassionate future.
FOLLOW HELADO NEGRO
Album: Phasor (Released Feb, 9, 2024 on 4AD)
Set:
Colores Del Mar
I Just Want to Wake Up With You
Best For You and Me
Musicians: Roberto Carlos Lange – vocals, Andy Stack – guitar; Jason Nazary – drums
Credits: Producer: Deidre Gott; Audio Engineers: Jorge Denning, Jake Perlman, Rene Chavez; Audio Mix: Rene Chavez; Cameras: Micheal Minasi, Renee Dominguez, Lorriane Willet; Video Edit: Renee Dominguez; Host: Ryan Wen
