Helado Negro and Matt Crum are ROM

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Eleven years ago Roberto Carlos Lange, aka Helado Negro, and Matt Crum holed up in Shangri-La Studios in Atlanta. In two days the two artists experimented with synths, acoustic instrumentation, and live drum takes to lay the ground work for their their third album as ROM. But as Lange’s Helado Negro project took off (often with Crum as a collaborative member), ROM was an afterthought and the recordings took on the identity of a lost album. Chicago label Hausu Mountain has unearthed the recordings for a proper release of Possible Mountain in April.

Lange and Crum get into a Fripp and Eno head space, stitching together the recordings with electronic textures and samples. On “And We Will Go”, ROM open with a cosmic psych that transforms into an exotica beat before concluding as a frozen loop of stumbling percussion. Lange and Crum shift and mutate their compositions, but never in a way that reads as attention deficiency. Rather “And We Will Go” is whimsical and that capriciousness emboldens the duration of Possible Mountain.

ROM’s Possible Mountain is out April 29 on cassette and 7″ via Hausu Mountain.