Helado Negro: 'Phasor' (Live from Five)

Helado Negro
( Photo by Sadie Culberson )

[MUSIC]

Alison Stewart: This is All Of It from WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. The one-time Brooklynite, now Asheville, North Carolina bass musician, Helado Negro, is known for his deeply considered and atmospheric music. He'll be back in New York City soon, though, at Webster Hall on April 24th in support of his new album, Phasor. It features tracks both in Spanish and English, telling stories of real people, as well as meditations on nature and memory. Phasor will be out this Friday, but we're going to get a little bit of a preview. Helado Negro joins me live from Studio 5. Welcome back to All Of It.

Helado Negro: Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: We're going to hear a performance first. What are we going to hear?

Helado Negro: We're going to hear a song called Colores del Mar, which means colors of the sea.

Alison Stewart: This is Helado Negro.

[MUSIC - Helado Negro: Colores Del Mar]

That was Helado Negro with Colores del Mar. Before we go any further, will you introduce our audience, our radio audience, to everybody in the room?

Helado Negro: Yes, for sure. On drums is Jason Nazary. On bass and guitar and multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, Andy, Andrew Stack. On piano today, and voice is Opal Hoyt, and I'm me, Roberto Carlos Lange.

Alison Stewart: Roberto, if you go on the Helado Negro social media, you are always sharing your influences. You're very open about your inspirations. Why do you want to share that with folks?

Helado Negro: It's fun. It's the thing I really enjoy doing. I think that comes from a place of-- I'm curious and when I find things that I love, it's like, why not want other people to love it? I mean, not forcefully, but you're just so excited about things. I think I get excited about, especially music. I think the thing I like doing the most is sharing music with friends. It's like, I find those friends that we do that a lot. We're just going back and forth. It's like this exhausting session of we're just like, "Oh my God. But check this out. Check this out." I think that's-- it's invigorating.

Alison Stewart: So many fans of yours who are New Yorkers and who listen to WNYC know you used to be based in Brooklyn, now in Asheville. Why the move? As all New Yorkers want to know, why'd you go?

[laughter]

Helado Negro: Yes, why not? It was a good timing for me and my partner. It was a perfect time for us to go and see what's new and possible. I think the thing that always happens is you get comfortable and it's harder to move as you get older, and you're just like, "Why would I move?" We realized that the day we put our stuff in this new place, we're like, "What did we just do?" That's really hard, but it's also exciting, the challenge of knowing that you can do this. I think it's reassuring to know that you can-- It's changed in the sense that you're embracing something that you weren't sure you could do.

Alison Stewart: Yes. Did the move change your songwriting process at all?

Helado Negro: I think I've been writing the same song forever, but I think what it did was given me the ability to have this-- I think I've always had a lot of focus on creating and finishing songs, but I think the focus was kind of put under a different lens in terms of it wasn't this ambient stress behind me. I think in New York, I had a lot of these very intense feelings when I'm trying to make something or be productive per se. While I was focusing on this record, I was able to use that process and realign it with now this other kind of feeling of expansiveness, and also having space, like literal space and some brain space and body space.

Alison Stewart: Helado Negro's new album is called Phasor. It will be out this Friday. A reminder, they're playing Webster Hall on April 24th. In the press notes for the album, you said that the bedrock for this album came in 2019, when you interacted with this machine. The SalMar construction machine is thought to be the first composing machine ever. First of all, how was that explanation? Not great. I could use you a little bit better. Could you please explain to folks what it is and how you interacted with it?

Helado Negro: Yes. I know it's hard because it's kind of like one of these really technical things, but it's also, I think that was the whole idea was like something super technical behind the hood, conceptually. Then the application was really fun. It was invented by this guy, Salvatore Martirano. It's living in the Sousa Archives in Champagne, Illinois, and the archivist, Scott Schwartz, who I'd been in contact with since 2015. I finally got a chance to visit it in 2019, and I got to record it. It's like this generative synthesizer at the time. It's easy to find something like that now, that happens.

You can buy a machine now and it does these things, but then it was kind of just brilliant and fun and interesting to see a composer, an educator be able to apply his idea. Someone's like, "We have a supercomputer." He's like, "I want to make this machine that makes weird sounds." They're like, "Sure." It seems very not common then to have those resources. It made wild sounds, and I was able to use it in my recordings, revisit those recordings and use them as textures and loops, and use them as fodder but also influence, but then part of the arrangements of the music as well.

Alison Stewart: Go Google it.

Helado Negro: Yes.

Alison Stewart: It's really cool to look at by the way. I'd love to hear another performance I have in my list here, I Just Want To Wake Up With You. Is the title self-explanatory?

Helado Negro: Yes, I think it is. It can be as literal as you want, but it can also be you want to wake up with yourself. You're like, "I feel good about myself." I wake up, and I'm like, "I just want to wake up with that feeling that I woke up the other day. I want that day again." I think that's kind of like looking forward to that more than anything.

Alison Stewart: Here's Helado Negro?

[MUSIC - Helado Negro: I Just Want To Wake Up With You]

You take me all around uptown

Walk slow, dance fast, let's turn around now

'Cause all I wanna do

Is sing your song again and again

And all I wanna do

Is sing your song again and again

I just wanna wake up with you

Just wanna wake up with you

I just wanna wake up with you

What would you say if I changed my name now?

Could we make it a new place to stay now?

Islands seem lonely now

Float miles to see your face

String hearts to hearts, sing now

My voice changes so you know

I'm just a boy, I'm just a girl

I'm just a man, I'm just a woman

I just wanna wake up with you

Alison Stewart: That was Helado Negro performing live from Studio 5 here at WNYC. We got an unsolicited text that says, "Great music, I hear echoes of the Brazilian Tropicália movement."

Helado Negro: Cool.

Alison Stewart: Cool.

Helado Negro: Thank you.

Alison Stewart: Just wanted to share that.

[laughter]

I sound like I was Googling through the entire listening to the album, and I kind of was because I loved reading about Lupe Lopez. There's a song called LFO, which stands for Lupe Finds Oliveros. Pauline Oliveros was a composer, correct?

Helado Negro: yes.

Alison Stewart: Lupe Lopez.

Helado Negro: An educator, philosopher, et cetera.

Alison Stewart: Lupe Lopez was someone who helped make Fender guitars?

Helado Negro: Yes, apparently, I don't know anything about her. I just found this photograph online while I was Googling, looking for an amp that I used to use. I was like, "Do I want to buy a new one? Do I want to buy an old one?" I wasn't sure. Then this photo was just so striking to me. It was this black and white photo. In the caption it says, Lupe Lopez, building Fender Champ amps at the Fender shop in 1950. I was like, "Cool, weird, awesome."

Then in the Valorum, there was a lot of collectors and people who were fans and how they knew these amps, so essentially there's a market for her amps. Then there's collectors because there's a distinct tone that she created through these amps, this design that already existed, a bunch of people already made these amps I'm sure as well that worked with her, but I just found it so interesting that they loved it.

How they knew that she made the amp was that she wrote her name Lupe on the inside. I think it was like a quality control thing. I'm sure there's other amps out there with other people's names on there, but it was just so distinct and her sound was so, I guess the sound that she was able to do that with her care and touch and talent, she was able to make something different out of this design that was already created.

Alison Stewart: People are really obsessed with it, having one.

Helado Negro: I think there's like a niche, I don't think it's like worldwide, but I think there's like a niche it's cool to see when people are into something and just be excited about it. It makes me very excited to see that someone can be so appreciative of someone's work, just doing something that they were doing out of necessity. I'm sure it was her job, but she cared about it. It was cool. She came in, she did it. She wasn't trying to, she wasn't like, "I'm going to make the best amp in the world." She was like, "I'm just going to do the best job I can today."

Alison Stewart: What was interesting about having Lupe meet Pauline?

Helado Negro: I think what I was trying to do was there was this connection. What I was saying before about focusing on these things that you can do, not trying to do everything, but just one thing you can do. I think that was the thing that Pauline was talking about with deep listening, this philosophy that she developed about not just listening to like music or deeper listening to the world around you and yourself and having this connection that can center you, that makes you feel connected.

I think I was connecting this deep attention that seems like Lupe was doing. By putting this deep attention and creating this, she was able to harness this sound, this specific sound that people appreciated over time, from the 1950s till now. I feel like that's a great example of this idea of deep listening. Everybody was appreciating the work, the simple task of doing this one thing as well as you can do it, and knowing that it was gratifying for you, and you never know the impact it will have over time with more people.

Alison Stewart: It's interesting. I'm nodding because you're talking about deep listening and to folks who don't know you are a Foley artist. You're very aware of sound and how people listen and what things sound like. What from your work as a Foley artist has helped your work as a musician?

Helado Negro: So many things. I used to work with my friend Jay and we used to trade-off. He would do the Foley and there's just so many things. When the thing you're looking at when you're looking at the screen, you're like paying attention to all the textures of like the fabric that people are wearing the shoes, so sometimes they're thinking about, "Well, if there's a scene with somebody wearing heels, then you've got to put heels on." Then you would get some short shorts on and you would go inside the Foley room and you would have to like-

Alison Stewart: That'll rock.

Helado Negro: -you'd be like, "Whoever's walking with some heels on." That was a thing. It was really funny because either of us would be staring at somebody doing that in heels. I think that it was funny in the sense it was like something we are not doing or used to, but in the sense it was the artistry of it was learning how to distribute weight and understanding what that means from walking on pavement to cement to rugs to carpet. That is like deconstructing life in itself when you're watching humans go about what they're doing. It's like thinking about everything that you're doing. Even breathing is just like when you're listening to people breathe in a room, it's so freaky.

Alison Stewart: I hear it a lot. I hear people breathing in my ear on my headphones a lot. That applies to your music how?

[laughter]

Helado Negro: I don't know.

Alison Stewart: That's a perfectly fine answer.

Helado Negro: No, I think it's good. It's one of those things where it's this whole idea of deep listening. I love textures. I think when people ask me how I make music, I don't really make music in this traditional compositional sense where I'm working from left to right in a linear sense. I'm working vertically. When I'm creating the music, over time I'm peeling back the layers or adding layers vertically, not necessarily like, this is the chorus, this is the verse. It's like sometimes I'm like, I don't even know what this is.

Even when we're rehearsing, sometimes Andy or Jason, we're trying to figure out what the timing is. In my mind, while we're trying to figure out something really simple, I'm like, "Why did I make this weird? It could have just been normal." That's that part.

Alison Stewart: It doesn't have to be normal. It's okay to be weird. The last song you're going to play for us, what is it?

Helado Negro: It's called Best for You and Me and Opal's going to join us on piano and sing with us.

Alison Stewart: This is Helado Negro the new album is called Phasor.

[MUSIC - Helado Negro: Best for You and Me]

Quiet light

Pushing too far, it's all gone

Mom's asleep

Dad's not home, it's what's wrong And I'll go outside

Looking at the moon way too long

And I'll go outside

Looking at the moon way too long

What's best for you and me

What's best for you and me is all wrong

What's best for you and me

What's best for you and me is all wrong

Quiet light

Pushing too far, it's all gone

Mom's asleep

Dad's not home, it's what's wrong

And I'll go outside

Looking at the moon way too long

And I'll go outside

Looking at the moon way too long

What's best for you and me

What's best for you and me is all wrong

What's best for you and me

What's best for you and me is all wrong

What's best for you and me

What's best for you and me is all wrong

What's best for you and me

What's best for you and me is all wrong

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