Carlos Niño’s calm baritone echoes through the space of his Topanga, California, home, and when filtered through my internet connection and iPhone speaker, it begins to feel like a transmission from the outer reaches. He speaks in unhurried, spiralling paragraphs as if untangling a knot, pulling overlapping ideas free from one another, and his music – a graceful, glowing combination of glimmering ambient, dreamy hip-hop beats and experimental jazz – unspools in the same way.
Having co-produced André 3000’s debut, hosted the LA radio show Spaceways Radio for nearly 16 years and worked on dozens of solo and collaborative records, Niño’s Wikipedia page has him down as “music producer, percussionist, performer, arranger, composer, musician, programmer, radio host, DJ, music consultant, poet and event organiser”. He, though, refers to himself as a communicator, his ultimate aim “to create sound in a way that might make people open up to their life and depth”.
