Off the Beaten Track: Helado Negro
By David Wagner September 21, 2009 | 1:25 am
Posted in: Music

Helado Negro makes music that’s both unclassifiable and immediately accessible. Imagine yourself languidly lazing in a hammock somewhere in South America, soaking up the tropical heat while phasing in and out of a nap filled with lucid dreams. That gives you a pretty good idea of the kind of ambience Helado Negro traffics in on their album “Awe Owe,” which was released last month. Black Ice Cream (the band’s name en Ingles) has a musical palette dominated by nylon string guitars, down tempo Latin beats, hallucinatory electronic programming, and sumptuous Spanish-language singing. They’re almost like a more laid-back, South American Animal Collective. A lot of people might shy away from Helado Negro because they don’t easily fall into any established genre; they’re too earthy to be “ambient,” too electronic to be straight “Latin,” and too out there to be any genre anyone could easily recognize. But this is very evocative, cinematic music that invites you to get lost in it. It’s like nothing you’ve heard before, but it sounds strangely familiar, like Helado Negro somehow wormed their way into an untapped part of your musical subconscious. It’s like you knew that the kind of music on Awe Owe has always existed, but you’ve just never heard it before. Here’s a sample to whet your appetite:
Tags: awe owe, helado negro, off the beaten track













great find!
Comment by craig k — September 21, 2009 @ 1:39 am