Helado Negro
Canta Lechuza (Asthmatic Kitty)

On the new Helado Negro album, Canta Lechuza, Roberto Carlos Lange is asking us to come in from the cold. He's opened the door to his forest cabin and now we're standing in the middle of the kitchen, our snowboots dripping on the hardwoods. "How ruuude," one might say—but one shouldn't. Roberto has something to show us. He doesn't care about the mud we tracked in, the melting snow puddled up by the throwrug and woodstove (its sooty red-black glow a-flickerin'.) "Dude, listen to this! It's my new record!" he tells us—and this is what the man does. Helado Negro translates as "black ice cream" and Canta Lechuza means "sing owl." Rightly so—like the wise ol' owl, like Davey Crockett and the Jersey Devil,Canta Lechuza is a thing born of woodsy zones.

Backstory: In November of last year Roberto left Brooklyn for a month-long artist residence in rural Connecticut. From his piny retreat, Roberto awoke each morning to the dead-quiet of the forest. He got up, showered, put on a kettle, fixed a cup of black tea, then sat in the woods all by his lonesome, om-ing out into the almighty Void. Staring straight ahead, he centered himself for the recording hours to come. When the tea was gone he went back inside and began the workday. It was no stress, no pressure; a great cosmic calm presiding. He was in a benevolent place where nothing moved, where all was quiet and subtle. The result is Canta Lechuza—a majestically pretty electronic pop record; easygoing and beautifully mellow, but each piece danceable, each part a dance party.

If you're familiar with Helado Negro's last full-length, Awe Owe, the first thing you'll notice is this one sounds nothing like it. Awe Owe was a Funkadelican mega-opus populated by guest spots and collaborators. It was a sprawling Latin psych-funk record; hiphop-informed, humid, earthy. That's all gone. Slate wiped clean. Tabula rasa. In its place is a solo creation in the finest sense—just good ol', friendly RCL and his trusty MPC sampler. Canta Lechuza is an intimate, personal beast built lovingly from upbeat loops and deep, warm synth lines. An album with very defined songs, its song-structure has been labored over; choruses count bigtime, confident breakdowns and digi-pop bridges are all part and parcel of the greater good.

Like Roberto's beat-makin' project Epstein, Canta Lechuza is sampler-born—percussion plipping and plapping, basslines smooth and dry as a tube of blue neon. Deep-space micro-drones emerge from a wash of sun-filtered haze then bend around globular droplets of blood-red electro noise. Oscillating tone-shifts freeze up and fragmentize and become beats. With all this stuff tip-tappering and oonsk-oonsking through your headphones, you can sit back and imagine the source material for these samples and daydream up all sorts of wild fantasy origins: the insides of a tuba or a family tree of tree frogs; gusts of wind through an expressway tunnel or a ceremonial raindance at the Greater Crown Heights Water Jug Factory.

These 11 tracks fit squarely in mid-2011, a time of exploration into the wonders of technology, into sampled source material as dancemusic and dancemusic as impressionist painting. And Roberto's voice? High five! Round of applause! Talk about re-imagining—and rebirth! Roberto's vocals (lyrics sung in Spanish) are a big step forward, a crystallized realization. His voice recalls "China Girl"-era Bowie jet-setting to the vacation moons of Saturn; an Ecuadorean Chad Valley; a relaxed and tropical Peter Gabriel (or even Peter Murphy. Look at that tan!); Phil Collins, Atari-ized (or maybe Phil Collins without all the stuff your dad likes, e.g., more Miami and less Vice.) Whether set-out natural or affected with a hint of reverb or delay, dude's voice is pure clover honey in your Yogi tea. It's reassuring, human, medicinal, down-to-help, up-for-fun, happy-to-please, out-to-sooth...

And that, fellow travelers, is our centerline: For all its reinvention and new terrain, Canta Lechuza is a comforting record. The album's woodsy genesis makes sense; you feel Roberto shaking off the cold, turning on his mics. You see the tea cup steaming on his dresser. And you know he's content and that everything is going to be alright. Is it? Yes! Truly! Loneliness begetting buoyancy! Solitary isolation birthing universal dancefloor resonation! Compositional noise-dude braininess made fun! Woo! Listen to the sound of his voice; feel that smoky, rainyday vibe that is so much like woodpaneled solariums and incense burning and the window glass fogging up at dusk. Which is to say, the cold is outside and we're in— and it's good to be in. Naturally. So meet the new Helado Negro record, Canta Lechuza. Come in from the cold. The door is open...

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