The concept of black ice cream-- what flavor is "black" anyway? licorice? walnut? black bean?-- sounds strange but refreshing. Which is an apt description of the music of Helado Negro, Roberto Carlos Lange's project named for the Spanish translation of that odd dessert. On his debut, Lange, the Florida-raised child of Ecuadorian immigrants, offers a lazy summer's day worth of dreamy, percussive tracks (almost entirely sung in Spanish) that pay homage to his roots yet use broad brush strokes from a silvery, futuristic palette. It's like Beck's version of Tropicália, but bled of his white-boy admiration of the exotic.
You may recognize Lange from his work in Guillermo Scott Herren's Savath y Savalas, a project that is similarly enamored of Latin American psych-folk, scratchy beats, and warm, homemade production. And, in a lot of ways (most notably its blend of traditional Latin music with the elastic sonics of experimental electronica), Awe Owe sounds like a follow-up to Savath y Savalas' La Llama, which was released earlier this year. Except that there is no place for Llama's spooky undercurrent amidst Awe Owe's feather-weight, beachy effervescence. Without the steely, mechanical effects and dark, tinny din that are clearly preoccupations of Herren's, Lange is free to leave lots of airy space between his chattering percussion and loopy xylophone melodies and play with whispery bossa nova textures without being overwhelmed by rhythmic heaviness.
Without hooks to hang on to, though, or vocals to serve as your guide-- most of the singing here is washed out, like the sun-bleached stucco of homes by the shore-- this album gives off a first impression of curiously constructed background music. But like a pointillist painting, the individual songs seem fuzzy and indistinct until you look at the album as a whole, and only then do they sharpen into view. Opener "Venceremos" (translation: "we will triumph") gives the album a whimsical start, with a plucky xylophone run that's reminiscent of Stephen Malkmus' "Phantasies". The track then finds its groove with trotting percussion that sounds like horse hooves against cobblestone streets and an acoustic strum so breezy that you can practically smell the saltwater in the air.
With its ambiance so clearly stated from the get-go, the album then moves on into Animal Collective territory with "Espuma Negra", which builds its psych-tinged track over a hypnotic, repetitive core riff. Then "Dos Sueños" lives up to its title (which translates to "two dreams") with an ethereal, winding melody, spare, plinky orchestration, and some tangy harmonized "oohs" that are so mellifluous they almost sound created by synthesizers or a Theremin instead of human voices.
The album is frontloaded, though, and the middle, mostly instrumental section is somewhat forgettable and monotonous before giving way to the best song on the record. After roughly 35 minutes of organic melodies spackled over electronic beats and effects, closing track "Deja" surprises with its handclap percussion, which makes a nice bed for Lange's hushed, easy singing, nimble fingerpicking, and the ominous sound of distant church bells. Eventually the track displays Lange's mechanical proclivities, layering hard-edged scrapes and computerized bubbles under its echo-y vocal melody, making it the only track on the collection that sounds like it is meant to be listened to, not by the sea, but 20,000 leagues under it.
Lange made Awe Owe in his home studio in Brooklyn with different friends and collaborators (from the aforementioned Herren to Stars Like Flea's Shannon Fields) floating in and out of the sessions, and this gives the album the feel of being stitched together like a homemade quilt. And like a quilt, it is warm and comforting, if not necessarily dynamic. So while it may never deviate from its mid-tempo lull, its mellow, reflective songs are goosed by their Latin melodies, making it a languidly satisfying complement to the hazy, hot final weeks of summer.
