Carlos Niño & Friends

Carlos Niño refers to himself musically, and in many aspects of his life, as a "Communicator." Producing, playing and making music are facets of that to him. He considers his "presence, aura, energy field," his voice, and many collected instruments (a unique and colorful assortment of bells, chimes, cymbals, gongs, keyboards, shakers, shells, and more) among his essence, and hence his intrinsic means of expression and communication. What is he communicating? "Feelings, experiences, perspectives, journey reflections, state of being," he shares. "I am simply communicating, by being, offering, sharing… and mostly with sound."

It was originally through loving music and nature sounds that Niño became a cassette and record collector, then a DJ, selector, beat maker, producer, eventually a musician, and later a “Communicator.” Though he has long made music with accomplished musicians, Niño only more recently (in the last decade) emerged from studio work onto stages and various recording settings to play and create, fluidly, in the moment. "I had always wanted to be a musician," Niño recollects. "I took some piano lessons when I was young, I bought and played a few instruments in high school... No one in my family was a musician. No record collection in our family home... I always knew I would make and be involved in music though. My study was all by listening to and loving music. I never learned, or taught myself to read or write music… For me it's all been about feeling and doing.”

Niño started making beats with his Ammoncontact partner Fabian Alston when they were 17, around the same time he was DJing small house parties in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County. "I was just obsessed with music," Niño enthuses, "searching for, listening to and collecting everything I was excited by. That led to me volunteering in radio with the goal to be a host and DJ... and in 1995, it happened. I got my first opportunity to fill in for a Wednesday night program on KPFK, 90.7FM. The show went well enough and the program director told me the time slot was opening up, and she wanted me to take it." Radio was a major portal into the world of music for Niño and his first platform to publicly express himself.

"I invited, and was honored to have, many wondrous musicians, poets, artists, bands, and DJs on my radio shows over the years! Everyone from Luis Peréz Ixoneztli to Pharoah Sanders to Mulatu Astatke and even Dilla all came through. The first record that I ever produced was Dwight Trible’s HORACE - recorded at KPFK. Dwight agreed to work with me on a full-length record after I'd had him on my show to perform live.” In addition to Trible, Niño's earliest collaborators and mentors – all guests on his radio show, many of whom he is still close with – were Kamau Daaood, Adam Rudolph, Derf Reklaw, JMD, Phil Ranelin, Yaakov Levy, Nate Morgan, and Billy Higgins.

Sprouting from his early radio endeavors, between 1995-1999 Niño was a prolific concert organizer and promoter, coordinating and presenting events in venues across Los Angeles (including The World Stage in Leimert Park) with luminaries such as Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, Terry Callier, Eugene McDaniels, Gary Bartz NTU Troop, Airto & Flora Purim, Horace Tapscott & The Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, and many others (Niño has worked extensively in this field and still does). In 1999 Niño's son Azul was born, HORACE was released, and Niño was recruited to be among the co-founders of Dublab, where he would helm a daily radio show and produce numerous special events, concerts and parties over the next 15 years.

After several years working on a variety of projects with Trible, Niño founded the band Build An Ark in 2001. He was a co-founder and producer of Hu Vibrational with Adam Rudolph and Hamid Drake, Go: Organic Orchestra with Rudolph in 2001, and later The Life Force Trio in 2004 with his close friend and collaborator Dexter Story. Daedelus, Gaby Hernandez, and Andres Renteria were collaborators of Niño's from the early 2000s as well, and they were involved in most of these groups.

In 2005, while finishing the record Love Is The Answer for Ninja Tune, Niño reached out to several musicians that he trusted, asking for a string quartet referral. "Everyone came back to me with the same answer: Miguel Atwood-Ferguson." Soon after their first session, Niño invited Atwood-Ferguson to his living room studio in Echo Park. The two became fast friends and extensive collaborators. They worked together on The Life Force Trio, Ammoncontact, and What's The Science? with Lil Sci. They co-produced records for Mia Doi Todd, and for themselves as a duo on Fill The Heart Shaped Cup (Alpha Pup, 2007), Suite For Ma Dukes EP (Mochilla, 2009) and, recently, Chicago Waves (International Anthem, 2020). Atwood-Ferguson and Niño also worked together on drummer/producer Makaya McCraven’s breakthrough International Anthem release, Universal Beings.

"Every Year was filled with musical projects, recording, mixing, releasing, performing, touring, and presenting in different forms, phases, configurations, and levels of development," Niño recollects. "Through it all," he computes, "and especially in regard to my experiences with Build An Ark, a larger ensemble of anywhere from 7-30 very different people that I brought together, I realized that I wanted to be free of any expectations, self-imposed or from others, labels, etc… So in 2011, I disbanded most of my projects and reconceived. I didn't want to lead a band anymore, and I wasn't really qualified to. I was interested in just creating and being free, so I started Carlos Niño & Friends.”

Niño was inspired to bring about a new "genreless" version of himself in music, letting go of the "Hip-Hop Beats" of Ammoncontact and the "Spiritual Jazz" of Build An Ark; and be able to go in any direction he wanted, at any moment, with the trust of his collaborators. Much of the music heard in the first Carlos Niño & Friends recordings was created while working with and around his friends Jesse Peterson (with whom Niño also co-founded Turn On The Sunlight in 2008) Dexter Story, and Atwood-Ferguson. “Friends,” for Niño, was a literal reference to his deep personal connections with his collaborators, his actual Friends, which is of utmost importance to him. "These are friends, friends of friends, old friends, new friends, people that I really counsel with, build with, journey with, travel with, and love.” Early on, “& Friends” also included Fabian Alston, Build An Ark members and, as his circle expanded, Deantoni Parks, Don Hernandez, Mark Maxwell, Farmer Dave Scher, Cut Chemist, Madlib, Laraaji, and others.

Flutes, Echoes, It's All Happening!, Niño & Friends’ critically-acclaimed 2016 release on Leaving Records, featured many of the above plus Iasos, Kamasi Washington, and Niño’s first recorded work with drummer Jamire Williams (for whom he produced the powerful solo percussion album ///// EFFECTUAL, also released on Leaving Records in 2016). On 2017’s Going Home, the elastic, expansive, collectivist “& Friends” sound further evolved through Niño’s post-improvisational collage work, and his cast of collaborators grew to include the blossoming new voices of saxophonist/music director Josh Johnson and pianist/producer Jamael Dean.

Niño describes his "& Friends" sound as "Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage.” He qualifies: "Why Spiritual? Because there is always a spiritual intention and center, feeling and vibrational message in these records. Why Improvisational? Because I approach the making of this music without any preconceived structures, I just open up to what I am hearing and feeling and experiment until I get the pieces where I want them. The preparation and information in the improvisations is our whole lives. It's an open state of communication. Why Space Collage? Because it's all about relationship and perspective, interval, layering, moving, listening, and massaging the mixes…"

From 2017 to present, Niño has been busier making music than ever. Amidst challenges in 2020 he was active in hosting small ensemble performances and recording sessions at private homes, studios, and outdoor spaces across the Los Angeles area. He also spent time going through his archive, creating new pieces from excerpts of solos, duets, trios and larger groups recorded in 2018 and 2019. Some of these passages coalesced into a new Carlos Niño & Friends album – More Energy Fields, Current – which will be released on International Anthem in Spring 2021.

More Energy Fields, Current is a definitive new peak in the recorded continuum of prolific producer/percussionist Carlos Niño. Featuring heavy contributions from many of the most exciting instrumentalists in the creative music constellation of Los Angeles (of which Niño’s has been a central force for over 2 decades), the album collects 10 pristine gems of collaborative communication helmed by the Southern Californian sage, elegantly presented in his unique “Spiritual, Improvisational, Space Collage” style.

 Starting with the subtle invitation of “Pleasewakeupalittlefaster, please…” (accompanied by the liner note from Niño: “We’re all in this together. I look forward to living in a much higher, much more conscious, harmonious state, here, with You, on this Magical Planet Earth.”), a gorgeously-keyed canonic infinity by pianist Jamael Dean, with transcendental counterpoint by saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, articulates an Earth-loving, universalist ethos that imbues the entire 44 minute program. While the sonics shift and evolve, gracefully placed in patient order across subsequent track highlights “Nightswimming” (featuring Dean and Dntel on modular synth), “Thanking the Earth” (featuring multi-instrumentalists Sam Gendel and Nate Mercereau, whom Niño has been working and bonding extensively with in recent years), “Salon Winds” (featuring Jamire Williams on drums and Aaron Shaw on flute), and “Togetherness” (featuring Dean and Devin Daniels on sax), the naturalist sentiments established in the exposition remain potently present.

The album is ripe with “ambient” passages that function like open portals between moments of consonance and clarity. But even in the occasional absence of drums, there is a powerful pulse implicit in the program’s frequency of consciousness. It’s a testament to Niño’s foundations as a DJ. His distinct ability to craft kinetic, cinematic sonic experience from dozens of independent, often rhythmically-ambiguous improvisational archive memories is more fluently displayed on More Energy Fields, Current than anything we’ve heard from him to date. It resonates, lucidly, with the way Niño’s mentor Iasos – who is known to the world as an original founder of New Age music – has described his work: "Real Time Interactive Imagination, Flow Texturization."

On More Energy Fields, Current, Niño immerses us in the watery depths of his world, spiriting us like a submarine through exotic nether-leagues of untouched sound. And when we arrive at the final, book-ending piece “Please, Wake Up.” (an extended version of the opening theme), it’s like a return, safely to shore.