Epstein is Roberto Carlos Lange, a.k.a. sample-based collage maestro Helado Negro. Known for dense pastiches of drum-machine beats and piled MPC-filtered ephemera, as well as flashes of pop and psychedelia, Lange just released a new LP on Asthmatic Kitty entitled Sealess See. Leave it to a man with a wildly inventive, ever-changing sound to make something out of nothing. In this piece he penned for ALARM, Lange tells the story behind his collaboration with artist David Ellis and their trash-based music machines.
Rhythmic Trash Sculptures
by Roberto Carlos Lange (Epstein)
Video 1 (Quicktime)
Video 2 (Quicktime)
When I started working on the Rhythmic Trash pieces with David Ellis, it happened at a time when I felt defeated in NY and wasn’t trying to hang around for too long. The first time I came over, everything was all theory, and we didn’t have a good direction on how to get everything to work. We took so many things apart and saw sparks and smokes many times. The idea was to make an acoustic instrument out of trash that looked like a pile of trash. No wires showing or any electric plumbing out for the eye to see, just simply a pile of trash that came to life and sounded like nothing you had heard before.