Helado Negro returns with new single ‘LFO (Lupe Finds Oliveros)’
The great gifter of peace, Helado Negro, has returned like Father Blissmas with another merry single you can positively float upon. This time, ‘LFO (Lupe Finds Oliveros)’, breaks free from pure tranquillity and offers a driving hi-hat drum rhythm and echoing vocals akin to a one-man plus reverb mimic of a Bulgarian voice choir.
The track is taken from the forthcoming album Phasor, which is due to arrive in February. Once more, the record sees Roberto Carlos Lange turn electronic exploration into deeply human sounds. On previous efforts like 2021’s brilliant Far In, Lange used his Helado Negro project to explore how seamlessly synthesised sounds could be equated to emotional riffs.
Now, he’s hit the motherload thanks to a day-long visit to tinker with Salvatore Matirano’s SAL MAR machine at the University of Illinois. The synthesiser / bat-cave supercomputer uses traditional analogue technology but can create infinite sound sequences. Thus, things remain natural, and the process retains an organic edge of creative flow, but the capabilities are pushed to new limits.
“I was enthralled by it,” Lange explains in a press release. “It gave me special insight into what stimulates me. This pursuit of constant curiosity in process and outcome. The songs are the fruit, but I love what’s under the dirt. The unseen magical process. I don’t want everybody to see it because not everyone cares to see it. Some of us just want the fruit. I do. But I want to grow the fruit, too.”
While infinite possibility might lead to many artists overcooking ideas, you can trust Lange to remain refined, and ‘LFO’ typifies how this inspiration has been honed into a luscious flow of sound. There’s something of the spirit of riding a bike at dusk in the mix, and that resonance encapsulates the depth that he spoons into his ideas.
As he says of the specific inspiration of ‘LFO’, it marries the inspirations of Lupe Lopez, a Mexican-American woman who worked for Fender creating secretly specialised amps, and the electronic composer Pauline Oliveros. “Lupe’s amps are sought after, her care and touch apparently harnessed a special sound from this design,“ Lange explains. “I fell in love with this story and this legacy and the mythology surrounding it. How craft touches us so deeply in the smallest ways. Deep care for the littlest things makes all the difference.“
Although it might not have a hook to truly rope you into its cruising world, his latest single is testimony to the power of deep care.
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