JAZZ
BY ANDY COWAN
Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson, Carlos Niño
★★★★
Openness Trio
BLUE NOTE. CD/DL/LP
Spiritual themes abound on Los Angeles trio’s far-reaching ambient jazz odyssey.
A conduit to everyone from André 3000 to Shabaka Hutchings, Carlos Niño largely works off ‘vibes’. As nebulous as that sounds, there’s no denying the gravitational pull the percussionist has to fellow sound collagists Nate Mercereau and Josh Johnson across five live tracks captured in five different settings (dating back to 2021’s debut outing at a Californian orange grove). Mercereau’s dreamy ebbs and flows, crafted via vintage guitar-synths, and Johnson’s painterly alto sax abstractions excel on extraterrestrial standouts Elsewhere and Hawk Dreams above a clatter of chimes, bells, shells, shakers and crashing waves (a Niño trademark). And while there are traces of Jon Hassell, Pat Metheny and Sun Ra, the next-level meditations of Openness Trio navigate unexplored frontiers, where inner and outer space is the place.