If there's a common thread running through the music of Asthmatic Kitty labelmates Helado Negro, aka Roberto Lange, and Julianna Barwick, it's that both make records that sound like being alone in someone else's head. You could say this, of course, about a lot music and plenty of solo records in particular, but there's a certain embrace of tranquility, diffuseness, and acceptance of solitude that links their sensibilities. The nocturnal, Latin-tinged loops of Helado Negro's 2011 album Canta Lechuza (translation: owl singing), were pleasantly insomniac, like what you'd listen to after everyone else in the house has gone to sleep, knowing that's when your best ideas come. Same goes for the layered, wordless vocal wisps out of which Barwick composed the songs on her best and most recent LP, 2011's The Magic Place. Hovering somewhere between pop melodicism and ambient abstraction, Helado Negro and Barwick's music reimagines solitude not as a form of loneliness, but instead as something productive, joyful, quietly beatific.
So what happens when two happy-go-lucky loners work together? We got an inkling of the answer late last year, when Lange offered up his take on Barwick's "Vow" for her decent, if superfluous, Matrimony Remixes EP. Moreso than Diplo & Lunice's relatively boilerplate remix of the same track, Lange's version kept something of Barwick's sensibility intact, favoring cumulous atmosphere over groove. A product of nearly two years of casually jamming together in his Brooklyn studio, Believe You Me, Lange and Barwick's debut record together as OMBRE, lives up to the promise of this remix, and in some cases even improves upon it.
Because Barwick's style is so transparent, Believe You Me sounds, ostensibly, more like a Helado Negro record than one of her solo efforts: Lange's casually strummed upstrokes and thick, relaxed croon will sound familiar to any ears acquainted with Canta Lechuza. But closer listens reveal Barwick's contributions-- and her ameliorating affects on Lange's approach. Lechuza's fascination with blips and glitches was, occasionally, its downfall; Lange couldn't always work in his electro-tendencies without interrupting or detracting from the tracks' atmosphere. The addition of Barwick here actually subtracts elements from his sound, often to great effect. Her weightless backing vocals steer the zero-gravity Tropicália of "Noche Brilla Pts. 1 and 2", and add a celestial gloss to the loungey and gorgeous "Weight Those Words", which should be played on a loop in every hotel bar in heaven.
Like any good abstractionist, Barwick says the name "ombre" came, simply, from some chance encounters with the word and a penchant for the way it sounds. But the word's meaning (think color gradient fabrics) fits the project-- and its occasional shortcomings as well. Though their sensibilities have a lot in common, certain particulars of Barwick and Lange's sounds are so different that the project sometimes feels like it lacks an overall cohesion. The Latin influence, for example, drops out in the second half, and after a few tracks on which Barwick's featherlight, wordless vocals take the lead, the complete disappearance of Lange's voice feels odd. Still, in its more blissful and transcendent moments (like the single "Cara Falsa"), all earthly quibbles feel beside the point. Going back to the image conjured by the name "ombre", seamless cohesion-- or a blending of two colors into one completely new hue--doesn't seem to be the pair's goal. Instead, Believe You Me comes off as a collaboration between two dyed-in-the-wool daydreamers, finding both harmony and intriguing incongruity in their respective visions.
