Carlos Niño & Friends — More Energy Fields, Current
Qobuz new release review (May 2021)
It’s frequently said that, given our current proclivities for music consumption — everything, all the time, then more — “genre” as a creative and organizational construct is increasingly irrelevant. Yet people keep making “jazz records” and “hip-hop records” and “rock records” and “indie records,” and even when those genre-bound creations push their envelopes of preconception, it’s usually by a factor of addition, resulting in “jazz with hip-hop flavor,” “new age-y electronic music,” “indie classical,” or other such agglomerations. But what happens when music actually gets made outside of the bounds of genre? Carlos Niño has been providing an answer to this for years now, and with his latest collaborative work, the L.A.-based “communicator” (he prefers that term to “musician”) has produced an album that’s much more aligned with a “vibe” than it is to any strict idea of genre. That vibe is most definitely one inspired by the New Age movement’s ethos, full of cosmic optimism and meditative expansiveness. However, Niño’s insistence on corralling musicians with jazz, electronic, indie, and, yes, New Age backgrounds allows him to raise this transcendental music above easy classification. There are threads of compositional rigor and wild-eyed improvisation, moments of intentional, shimmering beauty and passages that are so ethereal as to be nearly nonexistent. More Energy Fields, Current is very clearly a designed piece, meant to take the listener on a thoughtful and soulful journey (the closing notes openly referencing the opening ones), but it’s not designed to fit into an easy category. Whether utilizing Shabaka Hutchings and pianist Jamael Dean together on the decidedly un-jazzy “Pleasewakeupalittlefaster please…” employing Dntel’s synths on the organic, improvisational ambience of “Nightswimming,” or harkening back to ’70s spiritual jazz on the percussive, freeform groove of “Salon Winds,” everything here feels both organic and truly collaborative. Actually building on the human energy of people making music together, there’s a sense of vitality, fun, and adventure to this work that makes it feel less like “New Age with some additional musicians” than it does something truly forward-looking and inclusive. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz
