Name: This is How You Smile
Brand: Helado Negro

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

RVNGNL54LP

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Colour

Colour details

Discogs ID

Format multiplier

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2019-03-08

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Tax rate GB

Standard:20

UPC / Barcode

0747742382505

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Total Cap

1 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No

Artist

Helado Negro

Genre GB

Alternative / Modern

Label GB

Rvng

Roberto Carlos Lange (born 1980), better known by his stage name Helado Negro, is an American musician. In 2019 he was awarded a United States Artists Fellow in Music and also the recipient of a 2019 Grants to Artists award in Music from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2015 he received a Joyce Foundation award.

A South Florida native, born to Ecuadorian immigrants and based in Brooklyn, Roberto Carlos Lange’s upbringing provides essential elements to his songwriting, including his consistently bilingual—English and Spanish—lyrics. Exploring the expressivity within intense states of being, Latinx identity, and pluralistic sensibilities, his music as Helado Negro is an engrossing statement achieved through lyrically personal and political avant-pop music. Half a decade and half a dozen albums since Helado Negro’s 2009 debut album Awe Owe, and multiple projects under various aliases, Lange has cultivated an untraditional approach to songcraft that places his voice on an adventurous musical impulse without shying away from familiar pop appreciation.

Helado Negro is now signed to and released his 2019 album This Is How You Smile through RVNG Intl., a Brooklyn-based music institution. This Is How You Smile received an 8.5 rating and Best New Music from Pitchfork.

RVNG Intl. is an independent record label based in Brooklyn, New York. Established in 2003 by a visionary individual, RVNG Intl. has been at the forefront of the music industry for over a decade.
With a commitment to pushing boundaries and nurturing unique talent, RVNG Intl. has earned recognition as one of the most influential labels in the industry. In January 2014, Resident Advisor named RVNG Intl. as their label of the month, highlighting their exceptional contributions to electronic music.
In addition to critical acclaim, RVNG Intl. has also garnered praise from Tiny Mix Tapes who listed them among their favorite labels of 2015. This accolade further solidifies RVNG Intl.'s reputation as a tastemaker and trendsetter within the music community.

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Helado Negro returns with This Is How You Smile, an album that freely flickers between clarity and obscurity, past and present geographies, bright and unhurried seasons. Miami-born, New York-based artist Roberto Carlos Lange embraces a personal and universal exploration of aura – seen, felt, emitted – on his sixth album and second for RVNG Intl.

This Is How You Smile’s opener Please Won’t Please, a call back to Private Energy, finds vitality in turning the privacy dial further inward. Setting the scene with a spare drumbeat that moves the music forward in a more maligned than militant march, Lange’s voice tenderly permits himself weariness: “We light ourselves on fire, just to see if anyone believes.” Something must be reserved, “will anyone rescue what’s left of me.” Diving into glimmering spirals, the remainder of the album takes leave of the broader “we” and mines intimate pairings - siblings, parent / child relationships, partnership, and old friends. The story of This Is How You Smile includes a jaunty, head-nodding walk with his brother on hot pavement to the community pool of his childhood neighborhood in Florida. Such days end with a welcome fatigue and chlorine blurred reveries in Seen My Aura. The confidence and security of youth, moves away from family, across years and regions, to a bleak winter of Imagining What to Do, and loving partners deciding to make each other smile, while waiting for the sun to return.

This Is How You Smile invites listeners on a walk through the changing colours of early mornings and evenings, writing, recording, or hearing a friend, a figure emerges, and there you are.

This is How You Smile

Music GB

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