John Carroll Kirby x Nika Milano: 'Traces'

John Carroll Kirby is a Los Angeles-based pianist, composer, and producer known for his distinctive blend of jazz, new-age, soul, and electronic music. He has collaborated with artists like Solange, Eddie Chacon, Frank Ocean, and Steve Lacy. His synth work on Solange’s Cranes in the Sky and a 2024 Grammy nomination for Lacy’s Bad Habit cement his reputation as a sought-after studio talent.

Kirby has released eight solo albums, ranging from the tropical-jazz fusion of My Garden to the meditative Conflict, the ensemble-driven Septet, and the more electronic Dance Ancestral and Blowout (2023). The latter won a Libera Award and was praised by Pitchfork as “a psychedelically tropical eruption of new-age electro funk and jazz.”

He has also composed for film, scoring the award-winning animated feature Cryptozoo and the 2024 feature The Luckiest Man in America, which premiered at TIFF and saw U.S. release in 2025.

Nika Milano is a Venezuelan-born audiovisual artist based in Mexico City. Her multidisciplinary practice spans photography, experimental video, analog synthesis, sound, and film. Influenced by structuralist cinema and feedback systems, she explores the interplay between organic processes and technology.

Using obsolete media, analog video gear, and modular synths, she creates immersive visuals from raw electrical signals—producing slow-moving textures, patterns, and light. Her imagery is meditative and rhythmic, evoking altered states and temporal suspension