How long does it take to listen to a new album? An album is released, and you press play. And then it’s just the length of the album. But what if you really want to listen to the whole album? What if it’s an hour and a half long? What if you don’t want to put it on in the background while you work, do the dishes, or have sex? What if you try anyway, multi-tasking while listening to ethereal music wizardry, and it just doesn’t work—because the music demands full attention?
Assembled from material recorded in 2022 and 2023, Free, Dancing… is the first release by Carlos Niño, Idris Ackamoor, and Nate Mercereau. Depending on which circles you run in, any of these names could be well-known to you. Carlos Niño rapidly rose into the mainstream in November simply by virtue of having co-produced André 3000’s solo album debut New Blue Sun. Idris Ackamoor is a multi-decade legend from the SF jazz scene, and with his shapeshifting group The Pyramids in 2023 released one of our favorite Bay Area albums of the year, Afro Futuristic Dreams. And Nate Mercereau, some will recall, famously recorded a “duet” with the howling Golden Gate Bridge during the pandemic.
An amalgamation of experimental ambient jazz—it’s okay, “new age” isn’t an insult anymore—Free, Dancing… compiles material from the trio’s first three meetings (in Suisun Valley and San Francisco, including their performance at SFJAZZ last year for Noise Pop Fest). Brian Eno famously defined “ambient” music in 1978 as being “as ignorable as it is interesting,” and so the music here is possibly anti-ambient. It cannot be ignored. Because it’s not just interesting, it’s totally alive. Feathers waving, cymbals and bells shuddering beneath wailing sax, droning synth and electric guitar bellowing below, above, and through it all. The musicians are friends and they are making this music in the moment, with no agenda, and yet with full intention. And that’s what it sounds like.
Vinyl copies of Free, Dancing… are available from Amsterdam’s Rush Hour Records and New Dawn.
