Helado

Roberto Carlos Lange was inside a car somewhere in Portland, Ore., when he dialed in to our scheduled Zoom interview.It was late February and Lange, better known artistically as Helado Negro, had wrapped up the West Coast leg of his tour promoting “Phasor,” his recently released eighth studio album, the night before. But instead of taking the 8:30 a.m. call in his hotel room, Lange was out and about preparing for his next work trip.He would embark on a transcontinental and transatlantic journey to Estonia later that day,…

American sound artist Helado Negro (born Roberto Carlos Lange) is a songwriter, beatmaker and producer whose work quivers with the giddy joy of invention. His best work is 2019’s This Is How You Smile, an astonishing, inimitable collection of indie folk, horizontal dance and chillwave with a Latinx edge, wandering free of structure and genre. Endlessly slippery but always engaging, like hearing Arthur Russell play a MacBook instead of a cello.Lange’s Phasor era began with a visit to a synthesiser in Illinois that…