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During live shows, Carlos Niño could arrange a bass drum and a flooring tom, however his percussion is much from typical. Uninterested in sustaining a gradual beat, he creates shimmering atmospheres and earthen textures with the various 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 develop into a key practitioner of what he calls “non secular, improvisational, area collage music.” (The style it’s most likely most associated to is non secular jazz.) He’s a beacon of vitality and information who can get in contact with the town’s transformative saxophonists and provide the title of a grasp acupuncturist. He’s additionally prolific, with seven releases from varied initiatives arriving over the previous eight months alone. His newest, “Placenta,” is due on May 24.
On a latest afternoon at Endless Color, a restaurant and document retailer close to Niño’s house in Topanga Canyon, Calif., he was effusive and enthusiastic, recommending each menu gadgets and vinyl. A multicolored knit cap sat atop his wavy brown hair. Wisps of grey ran via the fuzzy beard radiating from his face.
Along 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. But most of all, he’s a listener. “There’s loads of occasions the place there’s actually no music enjoying in my life, however I nonetheless really feel the present of sound,” he mentioned. “I’m within the stream, basically. I’m probably not ever not within the stream, which is type of superior.”
Nate Mercereau, a guitarist who has develop into one in all Niño’s frequent collaborators, mentioned listening is an important a part of their dynamic, however it’s removed from a passive expertise. “It’s listening to your self and letting that be a part of the communication,” he mentioned. “It’s not only a receiving factor, it’s like waves inside waves in direction of one another and inside.”
The affect of Niño’s strategy is starting to be felt exterior of his pretty area of interest inventive pocket. He was important to the making of “New Blue Sun” (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 stay 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 mentioned in a cellphone interview. “And much more than that, I at all times like to fulfill individuals which might be crazier than me. People that 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 in the course of the ’80s and early ’90s, Niño had the era-typical experiences of entering into break dancing and spending plenty of time on the Sherman Oaks Galleria, the mall used in the course of the filming of “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
Before 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 ‘Giant Steps’ and INXS in the identical day,” Niño recalled. “I’d’ve listened to Run-DMC and the Fat Boys, after which listened to ‘Heavy Weather’ by Weather Report.”
While in highschool, he received a job at Reseda’s public library, the place he studied up on the musicians he cherished 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 stored it going for 20 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 youngster, initially utilizing a four-track recorder with three purposeful tracks. Over the a long time, 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 & Friends, an apt title for his feelings-based strategy. “If I’d invite them over to my home, I most likely would make a document with them,” Niño mentioned.
Mercereau mentioned artists are drawn to Niño’s vibe: “He brings loads of enthusiasm. He brings loads of precise connection. He brings loads of assist. He opens individuals up.”
At first, Niño didn’t know if André 3000 could 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 enjoying his flute alone as he walked the 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 provoking for him, and it felt resonant with me.”
Niño determined that in the event that they have been meant to fulfill, it could occur naturally. And then 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. Soon he was in Niño’s storage together with his flutes, and their classes developed into “New Blue Sun.”
“It felt like discovery, it felt new to me,” André mentioned. “That’s actually what I gravitate in direction of. No matter what it was, it was sincere.” He plans to launch extra of the music they’ve recorded within the close to future.
“Placenta,” the newest LP within the Carlos Niño & Friends assortment, presents a distinct perspective on parenthood. Niño was impressed by the latest arrival of his son Moss in addition to his emotions when his first little one, Azul, was born 24 years earlier. But as an alternative of centering his personal expertise, Niño wished “Placenta” to have fun and assist his associate, Annelise, in addition to all of the doulas, midwives and beginning employees who assist convey life into this world.
“There was simply a lot closeness and intimacy and sound and feeling,” Niño mentioned 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, might be each serene and overwhelming. “Moonlight Watsu in Dub” finds a simple rhythm amongst echoey clatter and nature sounds, whereas “Generous Pelvis” soars over Sam Gendel’s swirling saxophone. The 17-minute nearer “Play Kerri Chandler’s RAIN” — constructed off a stay efficiency by Niño, Mercereau and Botofasina in Köln, Germany, with the vocalist Cavana Lee — twists with anticipation and uncertainty earlier than reaching a secure touchdown place.
“This can be a tribute to the majesty of how we get right here — it’s important to be inside and it’s important to emerge one way or the other,” Niño mentioned. “In that course of there’s at all times a placenta.”
To Niño, making music is a non secular apply, one which he considers his calling and gladly accepts. “I’m interested by truly communing and looking for the frequent floor so we are able to cut back the large quantities of struggling that occur when persons are so hyper-greedy and hypercompetitive and hyper-violent with one another,” he mentioned, the phrases rapidly tumbling out of his mouth. “I’m actually interested by representing one thing else.”
