Helado Negro has released the new single “There Must Be A Song Like You” with a video directed by Andrew Anderson. It is the fourth single to preview the new album Far In (4AD) which will be released this Friday.
“Who are you?” Roberto Lange asks with his new single. “All of our songs are so different. All of the experiences that we are, can there be a song like you? This song is a map of this exploration. Looking for melodies and rhythms that are you. We are a different song – day to day and moment to moment.”
“There Must Be A Song Like You” follows the recent single/video “La Naranja.” “This song is about the world and thinking about how we can save it,” Roberto explains. “How long will we have these abundant natural things? Growing up in Florida, these oranges were everywhere and it was easy for us to not care about the ones that were wasted on the ground. Now we see the end of a lot of things.”
Far In is Helado Negro’s first album on 4AD and the seventh full-length album in his catalog. It follows his breakthrough 2019 release ‘This Is How You Smile.’ When Helado Negro began writing ‘Far In’ immediately following the release of ‘This is How You Smile,’ he could not have predicted that we would soon need to learn how to stay at home and be the stars of our domestic dance floors with intimates and online communities. In the new single “Gemini and Leo,” the titular pair stay indoors to discover each other anew with music recalling Roberto’s youth growing up in South Florida listening to 80s club songs, and their return sampled in 90s hip hop. Visions past and future meet in the euphoria of uptempo drums, Jen Wasner’s (Flock of Dimes) funky bass line, and Opal Hoyt’s (Zenizen) galactic swirl of warm and steely synths and bright backing vocals.
Roberto and his partner, the visual artist Kristi Sword, had planned to visit Marfa, Texas for an early 2020 residency to work on their collaborative project. Once the pandemic hit, they decided to stay in Marfa through the summer, inspiring Roberto to write a significant amount of songs on the upcoming album.
“Escape is never out there, you have to go inward,” Roberto reflects on developing an epic Helado Negro double album during these extraordinary times. Heavy, pulsing, rhythms drive “Aureole” through a dystopian landscape, but as he sings of endless psychological restrictions, the shimmering radiance of expanded realms bursts through. This chiaroscuro effect suggests a path that isn’t tuning out beneath monumental forces and anxieties but embracing the dark of the unknown with openness, pleasure, and growth.
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