Throughout live shows, Carlos Niño might arrange a bass drum and a flooring tom, however his percussion is much from typical. Tired of sustaining a gentle beat, he creates shimmering atmospheres and earthen textures with the numerous bells, shells, rain sticks or rattles he totes in a giant black curler bag. He surrounds himself with cymbals and gongs. He shakes desiccated palm fronds. Wind chimes are concerned.
A fixture within the Los Angeles music world for almost 30 years, Niño has change into a key practitioner of what he calls “religious, improvisational, area collage music.” (The style it’s most likely most associated to is religious jazz.) He’s a beacon of power and data who can get in contact with town’s transformative saxophonists and provide the identify of a grasp acupuncturist. He’s additionally prolific, with seven releases from numerous initiatives arriving over the previous eight months alone. His newest, “Placenta,” is due on Could 24.
On a current afternoon at Infinite Coloration, a restaurant and document retailer close to Niño’s house in Topanga Canyon, Calif., he was effusive and enthusiastic, recommending each menu objects and vinyl. A multicolored knit cap sat atop his wavy brown hair. Wisps of grey ran via the fuzzy beard radiating from his face.
Together with being an instrumentalist and a producer, Niño, 47, has been a beatmaker, a D.J. on each terrestrial and on-line radio, a document collector and a venue programmer. However most of all, he’s a listener. “There’s quite a lot of instances the place 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, basically. I’m probably not ever not within the stream, which is form of superior.”
Nate Mercereau, a guitarist who has change into certainly one of Niño’s frequent collaborators, stated listening is an important 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 in the direction of one another and inside.”
The affect of Niño’s method is starting to be felt exterior of his pretty area of interest inventive pocket. He was important to the making of “New Blue Solar” (2023), the sudden first solo document from André 3000, primarily based round flutes. Niño produced the album with André and co-wrote the music. He additionally assembled the opposite musicians who seem on it and carry out on the reside exhibits.
“It’s a real collective, and that’s what I actually dig about what we’re doing, and after I met Carlos, he put that in entrance of me,” André stated in a cellphone interview. “And much more than that, I at all times like to satisfy individuals which can be crazier than me. Those who say concepts and it’s like, ‘Oh hell yeah. Let’s go.’”
Born in Santa Monica and raised within the San Fernando Valley neighborhoods of Reseda and Canoga Park throughout the ’80s and early ’90s, Niño had the era-typical experiences of stepping into break dancing and spending plenty of time on the Sherman Oaks Galleria, the mall used throughout the filming of “Quick Instances at Ridgemont Excessive.”
Earlier than he entered his teenagers, his older cousin started opening up his world. Ernesto Potdevin, a painter, took him to live shows and golf equipment in elements of Los Angeles that Niño couldn’t get to on his skateboard and uncovered him to the boundless jazz of artists like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. “I’d’ve listened to ‘Large Steps’ and INXS in the identical day,” Niño recalled. “I’d’ve listened to Run-DMC and the Fats Boys, after which listened to ‘Heavy Climate’ by Climate Report.”
Whereas in highschool, he received a job at Reseda’s public library, the place he studied up on the musicians he liked and spent most of his paycheck on outdated data. He acknowledged the improvisation-based connection between his jazz heroes and rising rap virtuosos like Freestyle Fellowship. He began making crude mixes of songs he recorded off the radio, and at 18 he started his personal present on the North Hollywood station KPFK and saved it going for twenty years. In his early 20s, he was one of many founding D.J.s at Dublab, the pioneering streaming station.
Niño started recording music when he was a young person, initially utilizing a four-track recorder with three practical tracks. Over the many years, as he turned extra assured as a musician and performer, his circle of collaborators expanded to incorporate the South African composer Thandi Ntuli and the multi-instrumentalist Miguel Atwood-Ferguson. It additionally swept up elder mentors just like the jazz percussionist Adam Rudolph, the ambient architect Laraaji, and Iasos, the foundational new age artist who died earlier this 12 months.
Since 2011, lots of his albums have been credited to Carlos Niño & Pals, an apt identify for his feelings-based method. “If I’d invite them over to my home, I most likely would make a document with them,” Niño stated.
Mercereau stated artists are drawn to Niño’s vibe: “He brings quite a lot of enthusiasm. He brings quite a lot of precise connection. He brings quite a lot of help. He opens individuals up.”
At first, Niño didn’t know if André 3000 can be a type of individuals. He’d heard the Outkast rapper had moved to Venice, Calif., and had seen movies on social media of him taking part in his flute alone as he walked town’s streets. “I used to be like, oh, he’s journeying, he’s on a quest,” Niño remembered. “He’s attending to one thing that’s actually deep and galvanizing for him, and it felt resonant with me.”
Niño determined that in the event that they have been meant to satisfy, it could occur naturally. After which it did, at an Erewhon grocery retailer. Niño launched himself and invited André to an Alice Coltrane tribute that he and the keyboardist Surya Botofasina had put collectively. André coincidentally had been listening to Coltrane’s music on repeat for the previous week. Quickly he was in Niño’s storage together with his flutes, and their classes developed into “New Blue Solar.”
“It felt like discovery, it felt new to me,” André stated. “That’s actually what I gravitate in the direction of. It doesn’t matter what it was, it was trustworthy.” He plans to launch extra of the music they’ve recorded within the close to future.
“Placenta,” the most recent LP within the Carlos Niño & Pals assortment, presents a unique perspective on parenthood. Niño was impressed by the current arrival of his son Moss in addition to his emotions when his first little one, Azul, was born 24 years earlier. However as a substitute of centering his personal expertise, Niño wished “Placenta” to have a good time and help his companion, Annelise, in addition to all of the doulas, midwives and beginning staff who assist convey life into this world.
“There was simply a lot closeness and intimacy and sound and feeling,” Niño stated of the time interval after Moss’s arrival, “and a lot reference to the those who have been concerned.”
The album, just like the early months of parenthood, may be each serene and overwhelming. “Moonlight Watsu in Dub” finds a straightforward rhythm amongst echoey clatter and nature sounds, whereas “Beneficiant Pelvis” soars over Sam Gendel’s swirling saxophone. The 17-minute nearer “Play Kerri Chandler’s RAIN” — constructed off a reside efficiency by Niño, Mercereau and Botofasina in Köln, Germany, with the vocalist Cavana Lee — twists with anticipation and uncertainty earlier than reaching a protected touchdown place.
“That is additionally a tribute to the majesty of how we get right here — you need to be inside and you need to emerge by some means,” Niño stated. “In that course of there’s at all times a placenta.”
To Niño, making music is a religious apply, one which he considers his calling and gladly accepts. “I’m thinking about truly communing and looking for the widespread floor so we will cut back the huge quantities of struggling that occur when individuals are so hyper-greedy and hypercompetitive and hyper-violent with one another,” he stated, the phrases shortly tumbling out of his mouth. “I’m actually thinking about representing one thing else.”
