Carlos Niño & Friends released Placenta last year, ‘an album of universal scope’, which was also one of our Albums of the Year. International Anthem have shared a concert performance of Placenta, recorded by Azul Niño, CJ Parel, and Lani Trock at 2220 Arts + Archive, Los Angeles, California, in May 24, 2024,
In his review of the Placenta, Thomas Blake set the stage perfectly in his introduction:
Even on a label as freethinking and freewheeling as Chicago-based International Anthem, Carlos Niño is something of an outlier. While his stablemates have ridden the recent wave of free jazz, righteous funk and ambient experimentalism, Niño has taken a different route, one that is harder to define. Calling him an outsider musician is the easy option, but that doesn’t quite cover all the bases. For one thing, that term implies a certain propensity for working alone that doesn’t fit with Niño’s method: he is an inveterate collaborator, and Placenta is his fourth album in as many years to be credited to ‘Carlos Niño & Friends’. And the mythic outsider artist is not known to court success, whereas Niño’s most recent project was as co-composer, producer and percussionist on bona fide superstar André 3000’s most recent album.
So, who is he? His presence on over 150 different recordings tells you that he is able to don many different musical hats, but on Placenta, he is, first and foremost, a father. It is essentially a concept album about the physical and spiritual aspects of birth and parenthood, inspired by the arrival of Niño’s second child, Moss. Musically, he acts as a kind of ringmaster, main improviser and percussionist.
The album was dedicated to “The people who support birth: the Birthworkers”. This live performance felt like a free-spirited celebration, capturing the anarchic joy that Blake spoke of in his review:
Niño has somehow managed to capture the way in which the natural process of human reproduction, childbirth and becoming a parent can apparently make time speed up or slow down. This strange feeling – time suspended, time rushing by – permeates the entirety of Placenta. Niño’s musical contributions – his chimes, bells, cymbals, gongs and shakers – provide a consistent backdrop, but equally importantly, he acts as a facilitator or catalyst or lightning rod through which the swell of creativity can be filtered and condensed. The result is a work of warmth and humanity and unruly, anarchic joy.
Order Placenta: https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/placenta
The concert features
Nate Mercereau – Guitar, Guitar Synth, Pedals, Sampler
Aaron Shaw – Tenor Saxophone, Flutes, Electronic Wind Instrument
Andres Renteria – Hand Drums and Percussion
Photay – Drum Machine and Synthesizer
Tiffany de Leon – Percussion and Reiki
Maia – Voice
V.C.R – Voice
Haize Hawke – Voice
Jimetta Rose – Voice
Georgia Anne Muldrow – Voice
and Carlos Niño – Bells, Chimes, Cymbals, Gongs, Percussion, Plants, Rattles, Whistles . . .
International Anthem have also done a great online feature with words and reflections from Haize Hawke and Annelise Niño on the live performance and the all-encompassing experience of love, pregnancy, and birth, alongside photos from the 2220 Arts show by Lani Trock, all of which was originally published in the print version of Issue No. 3 of 𝑻𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝑻𝒉𝒆 𝑳𝒊𝒏𝒆𝒔. This is a great zine, available to order via International Anthem’s Bandcamp page, I highly recommend it.
https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/merch/tracing-the-lines-issue-3
