As a creative offering on his 30th birthday (February 16, 2007), acclaimed producer Carlos Niño joined together with the incredibly gifted multi-instrumentalist/composer Miguel Atwood-Ferguson to make an inspired, instrumental soul record of what he calls "intimate-epic" proportions. "Fill The Heart Shaped Cup is a project that came about after I finished work on Ammoncontact's With Voices (Ninja Tune) and The Life Force Trio's Living Room (Plug Research) in early 2006," Niño explains. "It's the next step in a wonderfully natural progression for me as a producer/composer. I've been working closely with Miguel and featured him on With Voices and Living Room. He's one of the most amazing musical talents that I've ever come into contact with. I haven't been as excited working with somebody new [to me] since 1996 when I met Dwight Trible and 1999 when I met Daedelus."

Fill The Heart Shaped Cup is a culmination of all of his past work in the form of ten new tracks. "It's influenced by the sea, the sun and all the sounds in life," Niño shares. "It's an exploration and it's a creative expression." Along with Niño's first ever published love poems, printed in white type over red hearts found in the CD booklet, Fill The Heart Shaped Cup is special to Niño because, "it's the first project that prominently features Miguel up front. Having been trained classically since he was four on violin and viola, writing symphonies and songs since his early teens, leading groups over the years and having made recording and/or live sessions with everyone from Ray Charles to OutKast, John Cale to Stevie Wonder, Leon Ware to Essa Pekka Salonen, Common to Henry Grimes and hundreds of others, Miguel, at 27, is ready to emerge as his own artist playing and recording his own compositions."