“Placenta,” Carlos Niño and Friends’ follow-up to last year’s “(I’m Just) Chillin’, on Fire,” was inspired by the birth of Carlos and his partner Annelise’s son, Moss Niño. The album celebrates the process of pregnancy, labor, and birth, not only in word (with song titles like “Love to all Doulas!,” “Some rest for the Midwives…,” “Birthworkers Magic and how we all get hear…” and more), but through the music too, the forms of the songs—so many of the tracks on “Placenta” feel like real journeys, the ups and downs of pregnancy, the anxieties and joys, the cycles of pain and rest and exhaustion of labor, the supreme wild elation of birth—all this feels reflected in choices that Niño and the other performers make on the album. Niño’s such a great connector of people and ideas, and this album feels like a work of love and awe, bringing together like-minded folks for the purpose of making music that explores our journeys to life and what it means to bring another human into the world.
“Love to all Doulas!” features Niño on percussions and close collaborator Nate Mercereau on French horn and “collage” (synths?). It’s a beautiful track and one among many that feel ready made for birthing classes or midwife-led birthing centers, by which I mean that it’s calming, pleasing, no rough edges. The song has amazing swells of French horn from Mercereau, along with Niño’s skillful use of chimes, bells, shakers and other percussion instruments to add texture and shape to the track. “Love to all Doulas!” feels so celebratory and lively, a fist-pumping joyfulness and gratitude.
“Real Vital Organs” is another track that feels designed to buoy your spirit: it’s Jamael Dean on organ and Niño on percussion, and it’s mostly Dean unfurling these pulsating phrases on the organ in the first part of the track, and then dissolving slowly into shakers, gong, chimes, bird song, and other soft noises from Niño, all flowing air and texture, a beautiful track.
Both “Birthworkers Magic and how we get hear” and “This ‘I’ was not” feature prominent guests—with André 3000 on flute and pedals on “Birthworkers…” and Ariel Kalma on vocals on “This ‘I’ was not.” “Birthworkers…” is an incredible song—it starts with a dithering flute and whispered vocals from Maia, along with thick bubbling noises in the background (maybe from Jesse Peterson’s guembri). Maia and André 3000’s flutes chase each other throughout the first part of the track, taking turns, making quick exchanges. The song cools down in the midsection, with the flutes hitting longer and longer notes, and the percussion becoming more central, a laboring, waiting section of the song. It all stretches out and gets slower and quieter as the track goes on, with some gorgeous flute playing toward the end of the song.
“This ‘I’ was not” has the great Ariel Kalma’s voice, so distinctive and friendly, which, like on his album earlier this year with Jeremiah Chiu and Marta Sofia Honer, adds such a wonderful presence to the track, which features organ playing from Surya Botofasina and percussion from Carlos’s partner, Annelise. Kalma says, “The I was not before. The I will not after. Either you is or not. Not more. Nevertheless. Life is always. So we are part of a bigger picture than it seems to our eye. So what is it if not an all-encompassing realm, where beings pop out and in of existence. What a relief!”
The last four tracks on the album—"Moonlight Watsu in Dub,” “Generous Pelvis,” “Bi-Location,” and the massive “’Play Kerri Chandler’s RAIN’”—all feel wilder, weirder, and noisier than what comes before. “Moonlight Watsu in Dub” features drums (or drum programming) from Photay, and it’s got one of the most pronounced beats on the album. “Generous Pelvis,” about midway through, features some strong beats as well, and this track feels both meditative and a little unpredictable (it reminds me in a weird way of “Beaches and Canyons”-era Black Dice). Both “Bi-Location” and “’Play Kerri Chandler’s RAIN’” continue that vibe—these are noisy, energetic, celebratory, ecstatic songs. This last section of the album feels like a statement on birth, on the experience of that arrival: chaos, turbulence, wonder, awe, gratitude.
I’ll say here that I imagine folks who are parents will have a much more immediate reaction to this music—or I should say that, as a parent, my memories of my wife’s pregnancies and my experiences of my kids’ births certainly influence how I hear this album. These songs bring back some of the sense memories of those times in a very real way, and it’s so sweet to be able to inhabit that headspace again.