CARLOS NINO レコード& CD

Review: On Rainbow Revisited, accomplished South African pianist Thandi Ntuli teams up with venerable LA sound mystic Carlos NiNo for a series of variations on one of Ntuli's compositions, Rainbow. The sessions took place when Ntuli travelled to Los Angeles for a performance in 2019 - she took up NiNo's invitation to a studio session where they worked through various iterations of the piece with NiNo acting as a creative director. Sensing the spark, they reconvened for a second session and the project simmered for a time, until NiNo found the calling to tie the project together as the exquisite album you can hear today.

Review: American DJ, producer and electronic musician Evan Shornstein, AKA Photay, is perhaps best known for his work on labels like the uber-exalted Ninja Tune, highly respected Astro Nautico, and super-good Mexican Summer. And at times (well, on 2022's On Hold), he's worked with telephone hold music samples. Forget all that, though, because here he teams up with the similarly visionary-minded Carlos NiNo for a masterclass in atmosphere and laidback, slick, immersive tones.

It's hard to really put your finger on what's happening with An Offering. In some ways, it's contemporary classical, or at least it makes you feel like you're listening to an orchestra warming up, possibly playing incidental parts to augment some narrative playing out on an audibly large stage. In other ways, this is highly experimental business that occupies a space in a kind of instrumentally-unique ambient world. Jazzy, strange, ethereal, and utterly mesmerising.