Photay with Carlos Niño MORE OFFERINGS Cassette/Digital out 12/9/22 // Brooklyn show at Public Records 12/10/22 // An Offering LP/Digi OUT NOW
Photay with Carlos Niño - More Offerings
Cassette & Digital album out December 9th, 2022
An addendum to the Autumn Equinox LP/Digital release of Photay and Carlos Niño's An Offering, featuring remixes, expansions, and new fruits from their ever-blossoming collaboration.
"Feeling, Now"
A lead single from the More Offerings collection – "Feeling, Now" – foreshadows a new Niño/Photay production project called Sagegreenfloors, and comes via a gorgeous video created by Photay.
Some words on More Offerings from Carlos Niño:
As the title makes clear, the More Offerings cassette and digital release is a direct extension of Photay with Carlos Niño - An Offering (IARC0062).
When Scottie McNiece of International Anthem let me know that he wanted to release a vinyl edition, an updated tape, and the full digital distribution for An Offering on the Fall Equinox of 2022, I immediately thought about putting together a second set of music and energy to share soon after that. Photay and I had already been discussing the making of Remixes, or having others Remix, releasing source material, full versions of pieces that were sampled for songs on An Offering, and pieces that were in the same flow as the first release, while we were finishing the original project. International Anthem agreed to release More Offerings as well and so we proceeded to finish it.
An Offering was originally released exclusively on the Photay Bandcamp page, Friday, October 1, 2021. The self-made tape run of 111 sold out in a couple weeks and we were stoked that people were feeling the sound. That rippled on greatly with the next phases by International Anthem in September 2022.
If you listen to both records, in either order, you will hear the connections. These are kindred spirits that twin flame, dance, twirl, entwine, form concentric, eccentric, helixing around each other . . . The same guest collaborators are present, and this time there are a few more pulses, rhythms, two special doses of the inspirational Iasos talk, the sound of Laraaji's Voice, additions by Diego Gaeta aka Club Diego, a live excerpt of Photay with Carlos Niño and Randal Fisher playing in front of the Marina in Los Angeles as part of the floating series ( www.feelslikefloating.com ) and the premier of the new Carlos Niño & Photay Production Project: Sagegreenfloors - that samples the Carlos Niño & Friends Improvisation from 053021 featuring Nate Mercereau, Aaron Shaw, and Diego - that was previously sampled for "H O N O R" on An Offering. It's like rippling waves, wind in the trees, breathing . . .
The Single, "Feeling, Now" (with accompanying Video by Photay) is the first taste of the new Beat Project by Sagegreenfloors, released here in this Loving Moreness . . . Hope You enjoy it!
Thank You for reading this and for listening . . .
LOVE!!!
Carlos
PHOTAY WITH CARLOS IN BROOKLYN PUBLIC RECORDS DECEMBER 10th
The final 2022 edition of our quarterly residency at Public Records in Brooklyn features Photay with Carlos Niño celebrating the LP & Cassette release of their collaborative album An Offering (as well as the impending release of its addendum More Offerings).
The band will be an all-star crew - called the 'More Offerings ensemble' - featuring Surya Botofasina on keys, Will Logan on drums, and special guest Laraaji alongside Photay on electronics and Niño on percussion. There will be a Carlos Niño & Friends opening set as well, as Niño leads a trio with Botofasina on keys and special guest Adam Rudolph on percussion.
This show and our quarterly series at Public Records are supported and co-presented by Qobuz.
*ICYMI*
IARC0062
Photay with Carlos Niño - An Offering
LP, Cassette, Digital album out now
~~ notes by Piotr Orlov ~~
Flowing water is an essential element of Earthly existence, a living force, a process of nature, a path-making which combines infinite sources mixing imperceptibly into a singular energy. It’s also a potent metaphor. A childlike wonder at flowing water’s presence and power, all the impressions it makes and creative neurons that it fires, happens to be a personality trait shared by Evan Shornstein (aka Photay) and Carlos Niño. The two producers/musical connectors may have grown up and reside a continent and daily realities apart — Photay in the forest serenity of New York’s Hudson Valley, Niño on Los Angeles’s ocean-adjacent west side — yet this magnetic power of fluidity, its sound, its meaning, what it can teach us about art and circulation, mesmerizes them both.
Water is the spiritual center of their first album-length collaboration, the vast and deep An Offering — from the visual on the cover, to the first sound you hear on the opening “Prelude,” to the underlying themes and images espoused by the poet-philosopher Iasos on the closing “Existence.” More importantly, the image of water-like flow is a continuous reflection of how these two musicians have come to work together and apart, of the way they made An Offering, and how they’re continuing to create, without a beginning and (hopefully) with no end in sight. An infinite flow of sound, from and to every direction.
Some of this work directly reflects the relationship between the two men, and of where/how Photay’s electronic, often-dancefloor-oriented tracks found Niño’s far-reaching world of ambient spirituality and improvised soundscaping. The meeting point is precise: Laraaji, the new age zither legend with whom Niño regularly collaborates, including at a June 2016 show in New York City which Niño played and Shornstein attended. The connection initiated immediately after that performance did not simply find the pair participating in each other’s recording projects — Photay remixing a Niño-produced Laraaji track and involved in Niño & Friends sessions; Carlos showing up on multiple songs of Photay’s 2020 album, Waking Hours, some of which was recorded at Niño’s studio—but in a broad exchange of ideas.
Niño long ago established himself as one of Los Angeles’ great musical conduits, constructing environments that facilitate partnerships between far-flung artists, perpetuating the freedom of working in the present, outside expectations, trusting the work’s destination. When the younger Shornstein met Niño, his own creative process was ”almost too precious, and it was always my goal to break out of that.” Adapting Carlos’ pacing and free-flowing strategies — scenarios such as sharing recorded stems, bringing in old recordings to serendipitously fit new tracks, or mixing organic improvisations with stylized, post-produced rhythms — transformed Evan’s perspective. It made him rethink ideas like “finished,” shedding pressurized over-analysis for a process he calls “fluid” and “healthy.”
It also made Shornstein reconsider some music they’d recorded but originally left off Waking Hours, “microscopic moments that were more expansive in my mind — there was so much honesty there.” What may not have made sense within the composed, hyper-stylized beauty of Hours, “felt really good” outside that context. Niño, who describes himself as “very album-oriented,” agreed, suggesting they create a unified body of work to match those moments — but not overthink it, make it quick, easy, productive, present. Which is how the re-imagining of pieces of music that became “Change” and “Exist,” sprung Photay and Carlos Niño into collaborating even more closely, and brought An Offering to the world.
The sounds they gathered into an intentional, meditative whole, were made together and apart, and sourced from all over. The two producers made connections between new music and recordings they already had: Shornstein found hours of tape featuring solo playing by Upstate New York harpist Mikaela Davis, which became a central adornment on multiple tracks. Niño sent Shornstein a quartet improvisation he made with tenor saxophonist Aaron Shaw, keyboardist Diego Gaeta and synth-guitarist Nate Mercereau, which became the basis of “Honor.” They brought in trusted partners. The atmospheric blowing of LA-based tenor saxophonist Randal Fisher is a focal point throughout, at times processed by Photay’s machines. Photay’s trombone player Nathaneal Ranson, and Niño’s long-standing LA-based collaborator, vocalist Mia Doi Todd, float in-and-out of the mix. When Niño makes a record, another original “new age” legend, Iasos, is bound to be around, and his strong summation on “Existence” are the only words An Offering submits. The healing energy of Peterskill, a short rocky State Park waterway that ebbs through New York’s Ulster County (and across from Shornstein’s home — “a real environmental inspiration”), flows throughout. “Creating with no constructs,” is how Shornstein describes the process of bringing these elements together. “It was just a feeling, which maybe is what music or creating should always be.”
Peterskill was also the source for a long extra track/outro when An Offering debuted as a Bandcamp-exclusive cassette in October 2021 — and quickly sold out. (A gorgeous Shornstein-directed film accompanied the release as well.) The notion of this music as “offering” came to life in its immediacy (the tape was released only a month and half after the idea for it was seeded) and in its gift-like nature (you can still get the digital version at a price of your own choosing). International Anthem found it, and instantly connected with its natural essence, a sound that accompanies one’s movements through difficult moments, the motion of instinctive change, a way to mark the radical period of our time with incremental alterations. Like flowing water affecting an ancient landscape. International Anthem offered to give An Offering a full vinyl release, which is why you are reading this one-sheet right now. And like any current, the interconnectedness between Photay and Carlos Niño, their symbiotic way of informing and influencing each other’s sounds, continues to naturally move forward and shapeshift. They are working on multiple projects together at the moment, and have already completed More Offerings. Flow on!
*Deluxe Vinyl Package*
Serene Stream clear vinyl
An Offering comes on a 160-gram vinyl LP (pressed by Smashed Plastic in Chicago, with lacquers cut by Bob Weston at Chicago Mastering Service) inside a heavyweight UV-gloss gatefold LP jacket, with IARC obi strip and dome-patterned inner-sleeve.
And, as always, we have a limited edition color vinyl option for the first pressing only, available via our Bandcamp page only, which is 555 copies of *Serene Stream* clear 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, Australia, and ROW
This album will be distributed by our good friends at !K7 and their various territory partners in Europe, UK, 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!!!
((( photo by Dylan Kaplowitz )))
Photay is the alias of 29-year-old Woodstock, NY-based composer, drummer, DJ, producer and musical polymath Evan Shornstein. As Photay, he has recorded a quartet of albums that organically bring together intricate chamber-pop arrangements, post-techno electronic textures, and a love of Black Atlantic polyrhythms. With the London-based Afro-Latin group Penya, and the Tanzanian gogo musician Msafiri Zawose, Photay has made an album under the name WEMA (Swahili for “kindness” and “benevolence”), a multicultural celebration of rhythm and folkways. Photay’s music is built on positive intentions. Truly.
Carlos Niño is a 45 year-old Los Angeles-based percussionist, producer/engineer, connector, and radical empath. Over the past 25 years, he’s been a central figure in LA’s musicker community, having helped found its great radio station, Dublab, produced countless live events, and participated in numerous bands and recording projects, most recently under the Carlos Niño & Friends umbrella. He doesn't confine himself within genres, and is adamant that friendships make the best creative collaborations.
