Percussion wizard Carlos Niño feels a sparkling transition

I wasn’t prepared for it. Not at all. In 2023, SFJAZZ invited me down to the Joe Henderson Lab during Noise Pop to take in the highly energetic ideator, rhythmist, and arranger Carlos Niño. He was performing with SF’s own Idris Ackamoor alongside spiritual improvisational music heavyweights Nate Mercereau and Jesse Peterson. But Niño was in that corner in the back among bells, bowls, ceramics, chimes, and cymbals—offering onomatopoeic vocal enunciations, I guess you could call them.

On the mic, Niño guided the audience, “Stretch with us, ahhhhh.” Then he’d purposefully fill short gaps in Ackamoor’s emotional sax solos with a heightened, floaty chant of “IDREEES.” From that moment, that experience on, I knew I wanted to interview this Los Angeles percussionist and producer.

But I’d have to wait. In the autumn of 2023, rumblings began about a new André 3000 project that didn’t involve the artist rapping, but rather, playing a flute. Three Stacks had been traversing the Earth on his own, and there had been multiple sightings of him wearing overall, bearing a wind instrument. Still, no one saw his entire album of a pivot into meditative jazz coming.

On that album, New Blue Sun, André 3000 worked with Niño. Mercereau also played on six of the album’s tracks. Indeed, most of the project featured André collaborating with other Niño-affiliated musicians: Surya Botofasina on synths; drummer Deantoni Parks; Leaving Records founder Matthewdavid on “mycelial electronics”; V.C.R. on violin and effects; Diego Gaeta on piano; Jesse Peterson on bass; and vocalist Mia Doi Todd. Mercereau told me that he saw the process around those recordings as “searching while writing.”

“We showed up for each other with lots of good feelings, but the words that feel strongest for me regarding this are curiosity, openness, and willingness,” Mercereau continued.

Niño strings together a peculiar type of connection with his projects, whether he’s producing or consulting. Last year’s Grammy-nominated gangbusters of a project, Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople, was recorded live underneath black oak and walnut trees in Coldwater Canyon Park in Los Angeles on December 18, 2024. It nailed a sentiment, a distinct vibe, a feeling in a way that other lavish, expensive projects never could. It expressed just how broken things are here in the United States and beyond.

That insight came courtesy of mighty poet-vocalist Williams, bringing digital culture back to the town square and mastering the oral tradition of testifying. But it’s also Niño again… adjusting the temperature with Mercereau on guitars and synthesizer; Aaron Shaw on flute and saxophones; Andres Renteria on percussion; Maia on flute and vibraphone; Francesca Heart on “computer, conch shell, and sound design”; and Kamasi Washington on tenor saxophone.

Many of us have been paying attention to music’s general move towards—for lack of a better word—an ambient space over the past 10 years or so. No matter the genre, we have a new thirst to cancel the noise and recharge with some peace. Listen, he won’t say it, but I will. Carlos Niño, very quietly, has been ushering ears in that direction for a minute. The recently released project “rain music” with UK-based Duval Timothy, a multidisciplinary artist from South London, is the most up-to-date example. As Timothy adds strokes of color on prepared piano and keyboards, Niño summons gentle summertime rains, atmospheric pressure, cloud formation, wind, humidity through gongs, shakers, and other percussive means.

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I finally got to talk to this bearded polymath, and he was very kind and transparent with the discussion.

48HILLS Greetings, Carlos. Jacob Peña, aka DJ Guillermo, the San Francisco DJ and co-founder of the Sweater Funk party, tipped me off years ago that you started in hip-hop. As a matter of fact, at one time, I owned a couple of [Niño’s duo] AmmonContact records. How did you begin there and wind up making electroacoustic ambient music?

CARLOS NIÑO Yes, I came up loving hip-hop. Great artists popular in the ’80s, like Prince, Michael Jackson, and David Bowie; also Colombian cumbia and salsa from my dad’s side, and the ’60s and ’70s classics from Jimi Hendrix, Sly & The Family Stone, The Doors, and Cat Stevens. In hip-hop, you also hear and get exposed to lots of music, and I was sponging it up. Very natural flow into sound discovery, creation, and sonic journeying. Hip-hop sampling is a massive survey of recorded music, and all the machines and techniques being used to create the full spectrum of sound were hugely inspiring to me.

48HILLS Your performance with Idris Ackamoor during Noise Pop 2023 was my gateway experience, and I’ve been hooked ever since. Carlos, you have a certain energy on stage. It’s an ambient hypeman-type force, combined with rhythmic accompaniment. Or at least, that’s how I describe it. When did you first see the power of ambient music and really comprehend that this “force” was connecting with a growing number of artists?

CARLOS NIÑO I do not use the word “ambient”—I only really enjoy that word when and how Brian Eno, Laraaji, and Aphex Twin use it. “Space” works quite well for me, reporting from the depths of inner space, holding space, spacing out, and creating space. I am often emulating fire, earth, air, and lots of water also. What I hear are the micro/macro cosmic soundscapes, sound effects, and the effectual. They open things up, narrate, grow worlds, and yes, “hype man” the fields, more than they accompany them. Often, I am the trail guide. Those concerts with Idris and my dear brother Nate Mercereau at SFJAZZ were really special for us as well.

48HILLS How does a background in hip-hop and a strong love for jazz inform your musical concepts?

CARLOS NIÑO They fully inform me. Everything is everything, and I am all for it. The influences and inspirations live strongly within me.

48HILLS How long did it take you to feel grounded in making ambient/space music?

CARLOS NIÑO Again, I do not think, feel, hear, or refer to what I do as ambient. I have been evolving and further realizing myself steadily. It’s ongoing, and I am grateful for the progress or, more so, the awareness.

48HILLS This winter, I finally was able to see your quintet SML at SFJAZZ, and it was a sweet treat, similar to that 2023 show. There was a great deal of listening to one another, and trust was displayed on that stage. I did not have the opportunity to see the André 3000 shows when he was here in 2024. But I know for a fact hip-hop and Outkast fans showed up to check it out, which I think is great. Expanding consciousness and testing growth are wonderful. How, for you as a musician and producer of that album, did that tour go? What was the intense listening on stage like, and did it change as the tour progressed?

CARLOS NIÑO Ah, man. There is a lot to say here and on several levels. I am not going to attempt to cover it all. What we did with André, touring in 2024, around 150 concerts—that was intense. Massive doors opening. We are part of a lineage, but that tour kind of shook us; the whole conception kicked in the Matrix walls and foundation of what could be done. Some people were very, very deeply into it; some were not; some didn’t get it. Some are still opening up to it, that he [André 3000] was willing to expose himself, his process, his heart, and put his name on something different. Every night was challenging for many, revolutionary. It was a big effort that has been continuously emerging in my life.

48HILLS On your most recent album, Bubble Bath for Giants, you have a ringers’ row of talent: Andre, Nate Mercereau, new age legend Laaraji, and 101-year-old Sun Ra saxman Marshall Allen. What is the feeling for you, of being a part of that energy? Guiding that vessel.

CARLOS NIÑO Feels amazing! These are all people near and dear to me. I feel total gratitude, excitement, enthusiasm, encouragement, fulfillment, and love about it. I do not take it for granted. It’s all very natural and fun! Weaving it all together is a full-on blast.

48HILLS You also work with the great Saul Williams. One of my fave projects he did was the drum and bass one with DJ Krust. How does that voice, that method of enunciation, move the spirit of a track or project?

CARLOS NIÑO Saul is tremendous. His voice, his heart, his mind, his studiousness, his coherence, fluency, fluidity, his research, comprehension, creativity, and his ability to offer all in the moment, immediately—truly awesome! We have been friends since 1998, and it all started with me being a huge fan of his piece “Twice the First Time.”

48HILLS Do you get a sense that because of the time we are in, the negative nature of the world, people are in general more open to the idea of “space” music?

CARLOS NIÑO I see/feel the transition, the shifting, the change. All this sound is a visionary score; it’s a foretelling. It’s imagining and living beyond, sharing the energy, sparking more and more sparkles of consciousness, and tuning and attuning in these times, piercing through the murderous insanity being perpetrated by some humans, who are ignorantly being supported by many more humans. I titled one of my & Friends pieces “Please wake up a little faster, please.” Laraaji says, “Flow goes the universe.” Albert Ayler, “Music is the Healing Force of the Universe”; John Coltrane, “A Love Supreme”; Jimi Hendrix, “Axis: Bold as Love”; and so on. The point is to hone and make your offering.

BUBBLE BATHS FOR GIANTS can be purchased here.

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