Helado Tropical Turns Grief Into a New Latin Sound

LOS ANGELES — Helado Tropical will take the stage at the historic Ford amphitheater on Thursday, Aug. 13, launching a highly anticipated national tour. For guitarist Fabi Reyna, the performance arrives four years after a devastating personal tragedy threatened to silence her creative output.

The duo formed after an unplanned studio meeting between Reyna and acclaimed electronic producer and singer Roberto Carlos Lange, best known as Helado Negro. Their self-titled debut LP, released in July, brings together Lange’s delicate, warm electronica and Reyna’s rhythmically elastic guitar styling.

The project is a rare modern Latin supergroup, although Latin pop and alternative supergroups have historically been uncommon. Argentina’s late-1970s progressive rock band Serú Girán featured Charly García and Pedro Aznar, while the 1990s Tex-Mex collaboration Texas Tornados united Flaco Jiménez, Freddy Fender, Doug Sahm, and Augie Meyers. In the contemporary urban era, Bad Bunny and J Balvin’s 2019 album *Oasis* was a brief, one-off event.

Helado Tropical’s album was self-produced, marking a distinct departure for both musicians, who have established highly individualistic niches within alternative Latin music. They describe its sound as “R&B lo-fi tropical wave,” a self-coined genre combining nostalgic warmth, ambient electronic design, and tropical syncopations.

The record’s creative process depended heavily on real-time improvisation. Working in physical proximity, Lange and Reyna shaped melodies, tempo shifts, and structural arrangements on the fly. Lange built atmospheric, evolving soundscapes around Reyna’s raw lyricism, including the track “Soledad,” with its intricate, dueling rhythmic patterns.

Reyna grew up in the Texas-Mexico borderlands before moving to Portland, Oregon, and has long regarded music as an extension of community activism. In 2011, she founded *She Shreds*, a pioneering print and digital magazine focused on female and non-binary guitarists and intended to dismantle systemic exclusion in the music industry.

Helado Tropical also gave Reyna a vital sanctuary. It is her first time writing and recording brand-new musical compositions since the July 2022 death of her close friend and musical partner, Nectali “Sumohair” Díaz. Reyna and Díaz had founded the acclaimed queer indie-pop duo Reyna Tropical, which celebrated Afro-Mexican and diaspora rhythms.

After Díaz’s passing, Reyna spent years navigating profound grief. She eventually completed and released Reyna Tropical’s debut full-length album, *Malegría*, in 2024 as a tribute to her late partner. In the studio with Lange, she explored isolation, heartbreak, and letting go through songs such as “Tocando” and “Déjate Caer,” which carry a heavy, introspective weight and serve as a sonic outlet for her ongoing journey through grief.

Born in South Florida to Ecuadorian immigrant parents, Lange has spent more than a decade developing meticulously detailed production. His albums include 2019’s *This Is How You Smile* and 2024’s *PHASOR*, and he has earned critical praise for intimate, bilingual dream-pop exploring cultural identity and quiet resilience.

The album’s centerpiece, “Sensación,” brings the pair’s creative friction into focus by placing physical intimacy beside the bittersweet reality of permanent loss. The song shifts between romantic yearning and the pain of moving on.

Helado Tropical is emerging as innovative Latin electronic and experimental artists receive broader global recognition. Peruvian-born, Berlin-based producer Sofia Kourtesis, Colombian hardware-synth artist Ela Minus, and Aymara-American composer Elysia Crampton have all redefined electronic music’s boundaries while challenging rigid, traditional categorizations of Latin American art. Lange and Reyna acknowledge their association with that experimental cohort, but view their own project as an effort to build entirely new worlds outside conventional genre labels.

The upcoming tour will extend beyond the tracklist of the collaborative LP. Performances will include reimagined selections from both the Helado Negro and Reyna Tropical catalogs, unified by a shared live aesthetic. Lange, known for avant-garde costuming and theatrical movement, has worked with Reyna on a curated visual presentation intended to bring the intimate, improvisational nature of their studio sessions to the stage.

Helado Tropical is not planned as a temporary side project. Both artists have indicated that they will continue writing and recording together, preserving the open-ended, supportive dynamic that helped them navigate a transitional period in their respective lives and careers.