Saul Williams, Carlos Niño & Friends : Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople
Like molecules of the air we breathe, for all of their importance the words and ideas of multi-hyphenate creator Saul Williams seem to hide in plain sight. Speaking on common sense, empathy and righteous anger with the perpetual sideways glare of the other, Williams’ performances may not top every chart or draw every eyeball but they have an evergreen vitality. As Christmas 2024 approached, he participated in a collaborative concert at Coldwater Canyon Park in Los Angeles to benefit the conservationist charity TreePeople. Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople is an unvarnished capture of highlights from that show, right down to toddlers babbling in the audience.
Carlos Niño & Friends is the namesake Santa Monica producer’s constantly evolving project encompassing jazz, electroacoustics, and other experiments and improvisations since 2008. The collection of “Friends” heard here on TreePeople include multiple makers of ethereal analog and electronic atmospheres, sax godhead Kamasi Washington, and guitarist Nate Mercereau. The latter had helped Niño assemble Andre 3000’s 2023 experimental pipebomb New Blue Sun, and that album feels like a sonic sibling to this one, even as that release had time to get fine-tuned in the studio and this live set was assembled on the fly under walnut trees and a cold December sky.
The instrumental arrangements ebb and flow as Williams’ words do, and later those of Aja Monet finding connections to rising waters in all manner of looming threats. Williams spends nearly an hour on lyrics dedicated to our current anti- moment—colonialist, racist, capitalist—and there’s a sense of necessity coursing throughout this production, an ease to the tension in the music that surrounds and supports him. Whooshes and creaks from flute, conch, and computer can match the measured urgency of broad-stroked standalone lines as well as pointedly satirical twists on titles of authority (“chief of staff and serpent”). TreePeople can also swell to fill space and time like so many Coltranes. Brass and wind and shaken percussion startle the senses by themselves, help Williams recount the historical origins of Wall Street, and back his call to citizens to hack all nearby systems, be they helpful or harmful.
Every few years, Saul Williams makes a welcome peek up from the underground to remind the world just how important his work can be. Between his appearance in the endlessly buzzworthy Sinners and the release of Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at TreePeople, 2025 has been quite good for him and for us.
Label: International Anthem
Year: 2025
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