“Openness Trio.”
Guitarist Nate Mercereau, saxophonist Josh Johnson, and percussionist Carlos Niño have joined up as The Openness Trio for their Blue Note debut. All are producers and skilled in effects and electronics. Both Mercereau and Niño have toured with Andre 3000. Johnson is known for his work with Jeff Parker and as a producer for Meshell Ndegeocello. Those brief capsules should give you an insight into the dreamy, hazy, electronically fused ambient jazz they create together on this album of five tracks, recorded in 2021, both indoors and outdoors in the Los Angeles and Ventura County areas. Head-spinning in a relaxed, soothing, but oft-disorienting way is a description, although that doesn’t quite do it justice. It sounds fully improvised through focused listening to each other. It’s a short listen, clocking in under 40 minutes.
The credits can shed further light: Mercereau (electric guitar, guitar synthesizer, Midi guitar, live sampling); Johnson (alto saxophone, flute, sampler, effects); Niño (cymbals, shells, bells, shakers, aerophones, gongs, plants, breathing, toms). All three take writing credits for each piece,e. Niño has built his reputation as a significant spiritual force of progressive music in L.A., and he fully plays that role here, coordinating the recording sites and inspiring his trio mates even though it would appear that Mercereau had most of the concepts and did most of the ‘heavy lifting.”
Johnson’s work with Parker in the ETAIVtet and SML is more recent than this gathering; the time gap between 2021 and now is admittedly perplexing. Nonetheless, this music breathes somewhat like those bands, perhaps an unintentional precursor, albeit spacier and arguably into deeper psychic turf. There are no extensive individual solos. Egos are left at the door as these three connect to build one sound, as if each antenna is tuned to one frequency, undisturbed by any other forces. Mercereau succinctly states, “Our sound reaches new and specific places we only find together.” The whole is far greater than the sum of the parts, meaning the listening experience should be devoted to the entirety of the album, which, considering the five different locations, is remarkably cohesive.
Part of this vibe is the post-pandemic freedom of playing together live. One of the first outings was at the Churchill Orchard, an orange grove in Ojai, CA. Mercereau had brought some themes to the meeting, but the music went in several other directions in the title track. The sounds are mainly derived from Mercereau’s dizzyingly electronically altered guitar chords and Johnson joining in with short bursts on synthesized alto sax as if he’s found his footing a bit late. Another track from the fabled Ojai is “Hawk Wind,” set against a backdrop with a view of the Topatopa Mountains. This one features all three participants contributing equally as they bask in the beauty of nature, undisturbed, with looped guitar motifs, airy saxophone lines, cymbal flourishes, and shaker riffs, eventually fading into the ether.
“Anything Is Possible” sounds like a cinematic score, chirping bird sounds courtesy of Johnson, over a dizzying bed of electronics. The trio recorded at Susan’s in Elysian Park, CA, in 2023, described as an intimate living room in the notes. It’s the most recent, as the others date back to 2021. “Chimes in the Garden,” with Johnson on animated flute over Mercereau’s reverberating chords and the percussionist simulating chimes with rain sticks. It also took place at Susan’s, though two years earlier, and was described as in a Garden of Electronics in the courtyard of an Echo Park home. “Elsewhere” takes its name from its location, under a pepper tree at Elsewhere, a bed and breakfast in Topanga Canyon. The sound is replete with bird calls, lyrical sax bursts, a rising mesh of synth lines, and sweeping cymbals,
It’s difficult to match Mercereau’s summary – “…The environments, indoor and out…the trees, the mountains, the water, fire…our families and friends, and our expanding world, it’s all here.”