Roberto Carlos Lange and Fabi Reyna feel like kindred spirits. Long before they met two summers ago, they were making music—as Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical, respectively—building their names with heart-on-your-sleeve electronic and indie-folk songs that touch on diaspora, longing, and love. On their collaborative record, Helado Tropical, these two worlds naturally collapse into each other, as the seasoned emotional excavators lean into their shared strengths. The result goes down as easy as mango-champagne sorbet.
These nine songs—or perhaps seven, since “Luna” and “Sol” (another iconic pair) flow seamlessly into and out of the floaty, syncopated standout track “Fluye”—were born from a three-day recording session that grew into a longer collaboration. After the initial meeting, the two musicians sent each other ideas back and forth with the giddy energy of new pen pals before reconnecting for continued recording sessions in each other’s company. Lange and Reyna used the time apart as a wide-open creative space, not so much focused on any specific conceptual or a philosophical (or even emotional) basis for the record, but on a feeling of soft moodiness. It pervades both the album’s sound and lyrics, as the artists’ comfort with each other amplifies this sense of warm languor. These songs—which mainly rely on the drone of a drum machine, guitar, and synths, which embrace the pair’s reliably beautiful and tremulous vocals—call to mind early Beach House. Helado Tropical rewards those willing to sway in its intangible breeziness.
Time (or, rather, taking it slow) is a major concern of these songs. “El Tiempo” says as much in all of its enrapturing sensuousness, Lange’s voice promising to come back over bright electronic keys. “Déjate Caer,” with its gentle reverb, extends a hand to a new connection, giving it the time it needs to blossom. “Sensación” captures that excitement of wanting to learn about someone. “Tengo que saber más de este conocimiento,” (“I need to know more”) they croon in unison over minimal percussion that grows until it gently falls into itself, the song focusing more on curiosity than intimacy. It’s romantic as hell, but it’s a sentiment more grounded in another type of love: the one-night friends we meet on summer nights; the flavor those adventures leave on our tongue.
The ease of their collaborative process also seems to have granted Lange and Reyna the freedom to get refreshingly dark. “Soledad,” with its slow keyboard refrain and Reyna’s hypnotic ask for a moment of solitude, echoes the filling of these necessary breathers over a crackling ambient melody and shadowy synthesizer. The song’s edge comes from the way it taps into melancholic honesty. Closing song “Un Calor” pulses with a similar darkness while still offering relief: the chugging drum machine like a body being hit by cool evening air after a heatwave, the scorching day giving way to the night.
Helado Tropical is a fitting soundtrack for the part of the summer when the season settles into a sweaty and pensive lethargy. It’s music for waiting for a date that’s a little (or extremely) late. You’re biding your time, face flush with vermouth or white wine or rosé. You know there’s a chance they’ll flake. You still have the warm breeze and the chance to order another drink, extra cold.
