Phasor

The eighth full-length album in Helado Negro’s catalogue follows his critically acclaimed 2021 album Far In.

Some of the seeds for PHASOR were planted in 2019 on Lange’s 39th birthday after a 5-hour visit to Salvatore Matirano’s SAL MAR machine at the University of Illinois. The machine is a complex synthesizer that creates music generatively with a vintage super computer brain and analog oscillators. It can create an infinite amount of possibilities in sound sequences. “I was enthralled by it,” Lange recalls.

That SAL MAR experience became the bedrock for PHASOR. It taught Lange more about himself and became central to his creative process. “It gave me special insight into what stimulates me,” Lange explains. “This pursuit of constant curiosity in process and outcome. The songs are the fruit, but I love what’s under the dirt. The unseen magical process. I don’t want everybody to see it because not everyone cares to see it. Some of us just want the fruit. I do. But I want to grow the fruit, too.”

PHASOR is Lange’s tightest collection—deep, atmospheric, meticulously executed. It’s aligned with 2019’s This Is How You Smile which found him incorporating more upfront drums and bass and focused grooves. His 2021 album, Far In, focused on being in quarantine—talking to your mother through Zoom instead of across a room. PHASOR, in turn, is a homage to going outside again. It’s a returning-to-life record, remembering what the sun feels like and letting it warm your skin.

After Far In, Lange relocated to Asheville, North Carolina and the landscape around him was essential to PHASOR—the crystalline mountains dotted with mica, wild blueberry bushes, and inky dirt surface constantly. He made the collection at his studio, across the hall from the studio of his wife, his frequent collaborator Kristi Sword, who created the album art drawings for PHASOR.