Saul Williams meets Carlos Niño & Friends at Treepeople [International Anthem]

Format: 2x12", housed in a heavy-duty cardboard sleeve, with an 8-page inner booklet, hype sticker, and printed inner sleeves with poly-lining.
CAT: IARC0102LPI

An uncompromising opening statement, intoned three times by Saul Williams, as he joined Carlos Niño & Friends for a sonic ceremony beneath the oak and black walnut trees of Coldwater Canyon Park, Los Angeles, on December 18, 2024.

The performance, hosted by Living Earth’s Noah Klein on the grounds of the historic conservation organization TreePeople, was a first of its kind for longtime friends and collaborators Williams and Niño. Both have been in touch since 1997 and worked together on various projects, but they had never felt moved to present in this manner. For the occasion, Niño assembled and led an ensemble of frequent collaborators that included Nate Mercereau (synthesizer guitar, live sampling with midi guitar, sample sources), Aaron Shaw (flute, soprano saxophone w/ pedals, tenor saxophone), Andres Renteria (bells, congas, Egyptian rattle drum, hand percussion), Maia (flute, vibraphone, voice), Francesca Heart (computer, conch, sound design), and Kamasi Washington (tenor saxophone).

Williams’ inspired poetics fit in completely naturally and at the same time clairvoyantly guides the electro-acoustic ecosystem created by Niño & Friends—a constellation of deep connections and cross-pollinations between complementary sound-makers. There’s the dialogue not only between Niño and Williams, but also between Niño and Renteria’s reciprocal percussions; the intergenerational woodwind counterpoint of Washington and Shaw; the suspended harmonies of Maia’s vibraphone in aerial resonance with Heart’s digital designs. Heart’s sounds further set up a beautiful parallel with guitarist-synthesist Nate Mercereau, whose live sampling and manipulation techniques transform fleeting moments of sonic presence into real-time musical architecture. Deepening the dimension of this constellation, Mercereau and Niño have for years shared a musical attunement that has led to dozens of powerful collaborations, making their interplay on this recording as spiritual and transcendent as it is subtle and implicit. And there is still another connection to highlight.

Toward the end of the set, Williams shares an extended reflection on the Dutch East India Company, the Indigenous Lenape people on the island of Manahatta, the origins of Wall Street, and a prayer for the end of empire, as he spurs an epic crescendo from the ensemble, wheeling behind the twin winds of Shaw and Washington, spurred on by his repeated call, “I’ve seen enough.” The smoke has barely begun to clear from this emotional climax when Williams yields the torch to poet Aja Monet, who stills the atmosphere with a soft, apocalyptic reading of text from her notebook, “The Water Is Rising.”

As Monet concludes her poem and steps away, Williams reclaims his prescient words in a solemn and hopeful return, closing the ceremony with a parable about a firing squad, where the dilemma of one of its members is a “belief system” that allows for a glimpse of humanity in the heart of an oppressor.