Another transmission has just been received from the Island Universe: Helado Negro’s cryptic, nocturnal Island Universe Story series of EPs has given rise to two new music videos.

Gus Gavino directed “Pressed,” a track from the first Island Universe Story.

“Pressed” is a dark and abstract instrumental drawn from the first tape in the sequence, Island Universe Story One, and Gavino’s footage is dark and abstract to match: chilly, gray and distorted, like a sci-fi dystopia. It matches, in fact, in a one-to-one correspondence between sound and vision: every blip on the screen corresponds to a blip from the speakers.

But something unexpected happens when Gavino’s graphics meet the beats of Helado Negro. By playing out the interaction of the layered sonic elements in “Pressed” as the interaction of minimalistic visual elements, not only does Gavino illuminate the inner working’s of the original track, but the ghostly harmonies lend Gavino’s spare, geometrical visuals an uncanny pathos.

The Zircon Prince takes on “Suntan Overcoat” and “The Elephants Foot” with a jarring collage of images set on a striking visual placemat.

Island Universe Story One and Island Universe Story Two, the first two installments in the freestanding series of EPs from Helado Negro are already out on tape and MP3 from Asthmatic Kitty Records.

Island Universe Story Three is now available digitally on Bandcamp or on limited edition cassette in cherry-red shell with gold lettering. Buy it here.

Fresh from releasing the latest EP in his new, experimental Island Universe series, Brooklyn’s Helado Negro is taking leave of the East to bring his music on a micro-tour of performances from Washington to Southern California.

Along with an appropriately spare stage set designed by Paul Coors—the artist responsible for the artwork of his latest LP, Invisible Life—Helado Negro will be hauling his musical electronics and songs from Invisible Life, plus a handful of songs from his other records, to Seattle’s Barboza on Oct. 13, Portland’s Holocene on Oct. 14, the Bootleg Bar in L.A. on Oct 16, the Soda Bar in San Diego on Oct. 17, and then back up to San Francisco for an Oct. 23 show at the Rickshaw Shop.

Cy Dune, a project featuring Akron/Family’s Seth Olinsky, will be among the featured artists providing support at the Bootleg Bar, as will San Diego–based producer/performer Rafter at the Soda Bar, but the main event is strictly a one-man operation: his intimate live performances will be “just me,” says Helado Negro, “and my machines.”

View the new video for “Enters,” directed by Zircon Prince, below or by clicking here.

[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/75439010[/vimeo]

Island Universe Story Two, out now, is the second in an ongoing series of EPs from Roberto Lange, a.k.a. Helado Negro. Not designed to “tease” or “build up to” or kill time between the Helado Negro albums, these releases shadow the LPs, moving darkly alongside them—and, like a shadow, may be more easily described by what they aren’t than what they are.

They aren’t outtakes or afterthoughts or byproducts or B-sides. These are fully filtered, distilled, unified recordings, chapters in a continuous narrative. They’re less like the flipside of a record than they are like the dark side of the moon: always present but (until now) just out of sight. “It’s a parallel to the continuum of the album,” explains Lange. They’re “something next to the albums, on kind of their own timeline,” a second stream, offering an alternate glimpse into Helado Negro’s ongoing process. Says Lange, “This is more of what I do. I’m really making music every day.”

But they aren’t exactly about that process, either. Two is underpinned by collaborations—the orchestral sound on the opening “Stop Living Dead,” for instance, was created with composer Trey Pollard and a double string quartet, and “Mitad del Mundo” features the talents of Wilco’s Mikael Jorgenson—but the Helado Negro project has never operated in a vacuum. From his headquarters in Brooklyn, Lange has always quick to point out the importance of other people, sometimes in other places, who have contributed to his music, and of the collaborative dynamic itself: some aspects of his process, says Lange, “are wildly free, and some of them are very structured and have a large amount of direction. It’s widely variable in terms of what freedoms are given and what control is taken.”

Ultimately, “I like the idea of process,” says Lange, “and then what happens on the other side, too. Both are important to me”—aesthetically satisfying product, as well as experimental process—and like any Helado Negro release, this latest chapter in the Island Universe Story delivers on both counts.

Preorder the cassette, due in late September, here.

“There’s no one home, just the ghosts who dance alone.”

The FADER just premiered a new video from Helado Negro of “Dance Ghost,” the first single from Invisible Life. Directed by David W. Merten, of GHAVA, the video follows an individual who moves throughout Miami as if in a daydream. As he progress through the surreal landscape of Miami, he is mostly in the background. [vimeo width=”542″ height=”231″]https://vimeo.com/57236809[/vimeo] Says Roberto Lange of Helado Negro: “They are ghosts to maybe most who are usually trying to create the least amount of resistance when trying to survive in the US due to the many instances of inhumane treatment of illegal immigrants in the US. The song may be saturated in ambiguous synth tones, but the reality of living somewhere or being somewhere where others want everything about you but you, is what haunts them.” Preorder the CD or LP of Invisible Life here.

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