Musician and composer Helado Negro, the moniker of Roberto Carlos Lange, will bring this groundbreaking, Latin-inspired sonic performance to Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra’s Liquid Music series. He’ll create an immersive electronica music experience with an all-star group of musicians from popular groups such as Wilco, Stereolab and David Byrne.
Helado Negro came together when Roberto moved to New York in 2006. The early group concept grew through projects and experiments Roberto would conduct while recording himself and others in his home studio. Loops, computer synthesis, record samples, and live instruments provided the foundation for the first full-length album, Awe Owe, a vibrant, shimmering, full-band Latin psyche-funk-folk epic. Since his first release he has created a new vocabulary of music for himself and those that follow him through his albums Canta Lechuza (2010), Invisible Life (2013), and his ongoing experimental series Island Universe Story.
Most recently he created a new collaborative group with Julianna Barwick called OMBRE, releasing their debut album in 2012 called Believe You Me. Helado Negro has worked with Bear in Heaven mixing their Pitchfork’s Best New Music album Beast Rest Forth Mouth. He also produced Prefuse 73‘s 2010 album Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian.
The son of Ecuadorean immigrants, Helado Negro was born in South Florida in 1980. His childhood was suffused with tropical heat, humidity, and hurricanes, all refracted with the rich sounds and colors of the various Latin American cultures of southern Florida. Pounding bass beats from passing cars, boom boxes bouncing down the block, and late-night parties called “peñas” provided a foundation for Helado Negro’s interest in sound and a lifelong quest to discover the unlimited variety of objects used to produce music.