Out now on streaming platforms: Carlos Niño & Friends' PLACENTA
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Carlos Niño & Friends
Placenta
Out Now on All Streaming Platforms
Today, June 12th, 2024, Carlos Niño & Friends release Placenta in full on all streaming platforms, following its earlier (May 24th) release on 2LP, CD, Cassette, and digital download.
"Placenta is one of the great conceptual jazz albums of recent times, and a standout release in Carlos Niño & Friends’ discography." - Bandcamp Daily
“...something really unique and kaleidoscopic. Although it’s got elements of jazz and elements of New Age music, it’s really hard to describe or categorize and it’s not the kind of thing you can just put on in the background and chill with. It demands your attention.” - Burning Ambulance
"...a stream of tranquility and enigma with sparse chimes, deep entrancing synths and incoherent breathy, chittering vocals, capturing the beauty (and uncertainty!) of welcoming new life." - TrebleZine
"Placenta's sound, while immediately recognizable as a work of Niño's, goes very deep and very wide due to his familiarity, respect for, and reliance on the gifts of his studio cast." - All Music
"Carlos Niño’s approach is humanistic and welcoming enough to allay any fears of elitism – this is very much an album led by the visceral processes of human bodies, and as such its charms are available to all who are willing to listen openheartedly" - KLOF Mag
"The West LA native...has long been a seeker whose local musicking bonafides are matched only by his vision of collaboration as a balm." - ArtForum
"Niño has become a central figure in a scene whose reverberations are starting to be felt well beyond the community itself." - NPR Music
Listen to Placenta here.
.ICYMI...
Big Beautiful Feature on Carlos Niño
in the New York Times
Published on Monday May 13th, writer Eric Ducker profiled Carlos Niño for the New York Times.
The piece features testimonies from André 3000 (who says, about Carlos: "I always like to meet people that are crazier than me. People that say ideas and it’s like, ‘Oh hell yeah. Let’s go.’”) and Nate Mercereau (who says: “He brings a lot of enthusiasm. He brings a lot of actual connection. He brings a lot of support. He opens people up.”) as it chronicles Carlos's prolific CV as a creator, curator, connector, and community pillar of the Los Angeles music scene.
About the forthcoming album, Ducker and the New York Times say: "[Placenta], like the early months of parenthood, can be both serene and overwhelming. “Moonlight Watsu in Dub” finds an easy rhythm among echoey clatter and nature sounds, while “Generous Pelvis” soars over Sam Gendel’s swirling saxophone. The 17-minute closer “Play Kerri Chandler’s RAIN” — built off a live performance by Niño, Mercereau and Botofasina in Köln, Germany, with the vocalist Cavana Lee — twists with anticipation and uncertainty before reaching a safe landing place."
!!! Carlos in The Guardian !!!
Writer Dashiell Lewis also interviewed and profiled Carlos for a big beautiful feature in The Guardian.
Lewis says: "It’s the “& Friends” part that is key to Niño’s musical philosophy. These are all people he’s keen to share his life with, and vice versa; that mutual affection comes across strongly in their shimmering symphonies."
Read the whole piece here.
((( photo by Todd Weaver )))
...about Placenta...
Placenta is the fourth collection of broadly imaginative and highly collaborative Carlos Niño & Friends music released on International Anthem in the last four years. It is also the first new music to be released by Carlos Niño & Friends following the November 2023 release of André 3000’s New Blue Sun – an album which Carlos produced alongside André, while co-writing, co-creating/playing, and co-mixing every song.
Placenta was announced on April 11th, 2024, the 1st solar return of Carlos and his partner Annelise’s new Earth child Moss Niño. Their experience of pregnancy, labor and delivery were all profoundly impactful for Carlos. Becoming a father again (a whole 24 years after the birth of Azul Niño, who has become a regular Visual Arts collaborator with Carlos) he felt total inspiration for this set of recordings, and hence it is perhaps the most conceptually-grounded & Friends album we've yet to present – fully connected to the spirit of family, birth, and "how we get here."
Placenta features many musicians living and working in Los Angeles – the community which Niño is deeply rooted in, himself. Some live in other parts of the world; almost all are longtime friends and collaborators of Niño’s. In order of their appearance on the album, featured artists on Placenta include: Nate Mercereau, Jamire Williams, Sam Gendel, Jamael Dean, Dexter Story, Brandon Eugene Owens, Maia, André 3000, Jesse Peterson, Ariel Kalma, Surya Botofasina, Annelise, Haize Hawke, Aaron Shaw, Devin Daniels, Tiffany de Leon, Michael Bolger, Michael Alvidrez, Moss, Iasos, Photay, Deantoni Parks, Adam Rudolph, Andres Renteria, and Cavana Lee.
*Deluxe Vinyl Package*
Placental Purple vinyl
Placenta comes on two 140-gram vinyl LPs (pressed by Pallas in Germany, with lacquers cut by Daniel K at SST) inside a heavyweight UV gloss single pocket jacket with hype sticker and poly-lined IARC dome-patterned inner-sleeves
We also have a limited edition color vinyl option, for the first pressing only, 444 copies of *Placental Purple* color vinyl.
Distribution via RedEye for US, Canada, North & South America
This album will also be available on CD, Cassette, and Classic Black Vinyl (same package specs as listed above).
Retailers in the United States or Canada or anywhere else inside of North, South and Central America... Please reach out to your sales rep at RedEye Worldwide if you are interested in making wholesale purchases of this album, or any other album in our catalog. Don't yet have a RedEye rep? Please just reach out to us and we'll get you hooked up!
Distribution via !K7 for Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, and ROW
This album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, and everywhere else in the world outside of North & South America.
If you are a retailer or store with questions about wholesale or are just looking to get some of our records... we'd like to make things as easy for you as possible, please do not hesitate to reach out!!!
