Throughout concert events, Carlos Niño It will probably have a bass drum and a flooring tom, however its percussion is much from typical. Tired of sustaining a gentle beat, he creates shimmering, earthy atmospheres. textures with the various bells, shells, rainsticks or rattles he carries in a big black bag. He surrounds himself with cymbals and gongs. He shakes off dried palm leaves. Wind chimes are concerned.
A fixture within the Los Angeles music world for almost 30 years, Niño has develop into a key practitioner of what he calls “religious, improvisational, spatial collage music.” (The style he is in all probability most carefully associated to is religious jazz.) He is a beacon of vitality and data who can get in contact with the town’s transformative saxophonists and provides him the title of a grasp acupuncturist. He is additionally prolific, with seven releases throughout a number of initiatives arriving within the final eight months alone. Your most up-to-date, “Placenta,” is due Could twenty fourth.
On a current afternoon at Countless Coloration, a restaurant and file retailer close to Niño’s house in Topanga, Calif., he was effusive and enthusiastic, recommending menu objects and vinyls. A multicolored knitted hat coated her wavy brown hair. Strands of grey ran by means of the thick beard that radiated from his face.
Along with being an instrumentalist and producer, Niño, 47 years previous, has been a beatmaker, DJ on terrestrial and on-line radio, file collector and live performance corridor programmer. However most of all, he’s a listener. “There are various moments when there’s actually no music taking part in in my life, however I nonetheless really feel the present of sound,” he stated. “I’m within the stream, primarily. I am really by no means off stream, which is wonderful.
Nate Mercereau, a guitarist who has develop into certainly one of Niño’s frequent collaborators, stated listening is a vital a part of their dynamic, but it surely’s removed from a passive expertise. “It’s listening to your self and letting that be a part of the communication,” he stated. “It’s not only a receiving factor, it’s like waves inside waves, towards one another and inward.”
The affect of Niño’s method is beginning to be felt exterior of his inventive area of interest. It was important for the manufacturing of “New Blue Solar” (2023), André 3000’s surprising first solo album, based mostly on flutes. Niño produced the album with André and co-wrote the music. He additionally introduced collectively the opposite musicians who seem on it and perform at live shows.
“It is an actual collective, and that is what I actually like about what we’re doing, and once I met Carlos, he put that in entrance of me,” André stated in a cellphone interview. “And greater than that, I at all times like assembly individuals crazier than me. Individuals who say concepts and say, ‘Oh, in fact, sure. Let’s go.'”
Born in Santa Monica and raised within the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods of Reseda and Canoga Park through the Nineteen Eighties and early Nineteen Nineties, Niño had the everyday experiences of the period of stepping into break dancing and spending numerous time on the Sherman Oaks Galleria, the mall used through the filming of “Quick Occasions at Ridgemont Excessive.”
Earlier than he entered his teenagers, his older cousin started to open up his world. Ernesto Potdevin, a painter, took him to concert events and golf equipment in elements of Los Angeles the place Niño could not get to on a skateboard and uncovered him to the boundless jazz of artists like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. “I could have heard ‘Large Steps’ and INXS on the identical day,” remembers Niño. “I might have listened to Run-DMC and Fats Boys, after which listened to ‘Heavy Climate’ by Climate Report.”
Whereas nonetheless in highschool, he obtained a job on the Reseda public library, the place he studied the musicians he liked and spent most of his wage on previous information. He acknowledged the improvisation-based connection between his jazz heroes and rising rap virtuosos like Freestyle Fellowship. He started making tough mixes of songs he recorded on the radio, and at age 18, he began his personal present on North Hollywood station KPFK and ran it for 20 years. In his early 20s, he was one of many founding DJs at Dublab, the pioneering streaming station.
Niño started recording music when he was a youngster, initially utilizing a four-track recorder with three working tracks. Over the many years, as he grew to become extra assured as a musician and performer, his circle of collaborators expanded to incorporate South African composer Thandi Ntuli and multi-instrumentalist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. He additionally attracted older mentors corresponding to jazz percussionist Adam Rudolph, environmental architect LaraajiIt’s Iasosthe founding artist of the brand new period who died earlier this yr.
Since 2011, lots of his albums have been credited to Carlos Niño & Buddies, an apt title for his feelings-based method. “If I invited them to my home, I might in all probability file an album with them,” Niño stated.
Mercereau stated artists are drawn to Niño’s vibe: “He brings numerous enthusiasm. It brings numerous actual connection. He brings numerous assist. It opens individuals up.”
At first, Niño did not know if André 3000 could be a kind of individuals. He heard that the Outkast rapper had moved to Venice, California, and noticed movies on social media of him taking part in the flute alone whereas strolling the town streets. “I used to be like, oh, he’s touring, he’s on a mission,” Niño recalled. “He’s coming to one thing that’s actually deep and provoking for him, and that resonated with me.”
Niño determined that in the event that they met, it could occur naturally. After which it occurred, in an Erewhon grocery store. Niño launched himself and invited André to a tribute to Alice Coltrane that he and keyboardist Surya Botofasina put collectively. André coincidentally was listening to Coltrane’s music on repeat final week. Quickly he was in Niño’s storage together with his flutes, and their classes advanced into “New Blue Solar.”
“It felt like a discovery, it felt new to me,” stated André. “That’s actually what I gravitate in direction of. It doesn’t matter what it was, it was sincere.” He plans to launch extra songs they recorded within the close to future.
“Placenta,” the most recent LP within the Carlos Niño & Buddies assortment, affords a special perspective on fatherhood. Niño was impressed by the current arrival of her son Moss in addition to her emotions when her first baby, Azul, was born 24 years earlier. However reasonably than centering his personal expertise, Niño needed “Placenta” to have fun and assist his associate, Annelise, in addition to all of the doulas, midwives, and midwives who assist deliver life into this world.
“There was numerous closeness, intimacy, sound and feeling,” Niño stated of the interval after Moss’ arrival, “and numerous reference to the individuals concerned.”
The album, like the primary few months of parenthood, will be each serene and overwhelming. “Moonlight Watsu in Dub” finds a straightforward rhythm between echoing noise and the sounds of nature, whereas “Beneficiant Pelvis” hovers over Sam Gendel’s swirling saxophone. The 17-minute nearer “Play Kerri Chandler’s RAIN” – constructed from a dwell efficiency by Niño, Mercereau and Botofasina in Cologne, Germany, with vocalist Cavana Lee – swirls with anticipation and uncertainty earlier than coming to a touchdown. protected.
“That is additionally a tribute to the majesty of how we obtained right here – it’s a must to be inside and emerge in some way,” Niño stated. “On this course of there’s at all times a placenta.”
For Niño, making music is a religious observe, which he considers his vocation and accepts with pleasure. “I am all for actually communing and looking for widespread floor in order that we will scale back the large quantity of struggling that occurs when persons are so grasping and hyper-competitive and hyper-violent in direction of one another,” he stated, the phrases shortly leaving his mouth. “I’m actually all for representing one thing else.”
