Latin-inspired foursome delivers sounds of summer

Editor’s note: The live version of Helado Negro — a four-piece band with guitars, percussion, and vibraphones — will come to Lynchburg on Sept. 6. The group’s musical ode to life, art and culture should make for a fitting commemoration to the end of summer. The show starts at 8 p.m. at Speakertree Records, and also features a solo set from Jason Ajemia and local band The Late Virginia Summers. There will be a $5 cover charge.

In an era where bands seem to be getting louder and fuzzier, it is quite refreshing to be gifted with Helado Negro’s first record, “Awe Owe.”

Helado Negro delivers the soundtrack to late summer, with its delicately rich while still remaining subtle, Latin-inspired soundscapes.

Brooklyn-based Roberto Carlos Lange (aka Helado Negro, translation “Black Ice Cream”) has previously collaborated with a variety of visual and musical artists, including Prefuse 73, Savath & Savalas, School of Seven Bells and David Ellis. Born in Florida to Ecuadorian immigrants, Lange developed a love of music in the true American sense of a melting pot. As a child, he was exposed to hip hop’s golden age while also experiencing his father’s late-night parties filled with guitars and Latin American songs.

Culling from his musical upbringing and various projects with others, Lange’s newest undertaking, Helado Negro, manifested in his Brooklyn apartment with the help of various musicians and friends. “Awe Owe” is the result: a balancing act of woven samples, day-dreamy guitars, layered percussion and his breezy Spanish vocals. The percussive element is a driving force on the album — shakers, hand drums and wood blocks deliver unique highlights emerging from Latin-styled rhythms.

Perhaps what is most astonishing about “Awe Owe” is its organic, intoxicating nature. It is a unique sample-based record that provides elements of various sonic eras, from South American ’60s pop to modern indie-psychedelia. The samples are warm washes of texture coupled with Lange’s heavily reverberated singing.

I was fortunate to connect recently with Roberto Lange via e-mail as he travels across the East Coast to promote “Awe Owe.”

Your new record sounds very organic and quite spiritual. Can you describe the process by which you create your songs?
The process itself is organic. The spirit that takes over is the path the process follows. That’s the map. Everything else are tools and milestones along the way that help build. My collaborators on this record are all apart of it. They are the cement, brick and I-beams of what this record is made up of. My voice is singing words in Spanish that are pieces of many ideas coming together to form another part of communicating with people.

“Awe Owe” is a great juxtaposition of English words on an album sung in Spanish. What was your intention behind the album title?
The title was always “Awe o We,” Kristi (she made the artwork for the album) interpreted it as “Awe Owe,” it made complete sense like that. Less abstract by being simple, but it was still enough for interpretation. My interpretation of the title is that “Awe” is everything ahead of us and also everything we have accomplished. “Owe” is everything that has made us/this up, and knowing everyone who has been apart of us, you’re grateful for them.

There is a strong sense of artistic and musical culture present in your work. What was your childhood like musically and culturally?
My parents are Ecuadorian, they brought me up knowing that I was Ecuadorian but also that I lived in the U.S.A.
Many parts of the musical culture begain with how my father would throw parties on the weekends and we would dance all night and then as the late night approached, him and his friends would take out instruments and sing Ecuadorian and other Latin American songs ’til the early morn.

I would say that my “real” introduction to music was through crate-digging: spending cramped, dusty hours looking for certain samples on records and then being introduced to new bands and genres of music. Have you had certain revelations with any found records? Which ones?
This is in no preference or direct influence, this is just what comes to mind: Victor Jara, Erasmo Carlos, Bootsy Collins and Parliament “Up for the Down Stroke.” I’ve also recently enjoyed the work of my friends: Leb Laze, The Predicates, “Spiritual Jazz” compilation on Now Again, DM Stith Remixes of “My Brightest Diamond,” the new Bear in Heaven record.