Singletary Center Expansive Sounds Series #4: Setting
Setting, a dynamic trio featuring Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, and Joe Westerlund, emerged from the rich musical landscape of Durham, North Carolina, in 2021. Known for their captivating improvisational sessions, the group blends an eclectic mix of strings, keys, harmoniums, synthesizers, percussion, and metallophones. Their debut recording, Rainbow Light On, transports listeners through a mesmerizing, textural journey, combining the warmth of organic folk with the otherworldly vibes of electronic soundscapes. Each of the album’s four longform pieces evoke the surreal image of a UFO slowly descending into a peat bog, creating an auditory experience that is both grounded and ethereal.
Setting, a trio comprising Nathan Bowles (solo/trio, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) on strings, keys, and percussion; Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors, Peeesseye) on harmoniums, synthesizers, and piano zither; and Joe Westerlund (solo, Califone, Sylvan Esso, Jake Xerxes Fussell) on drums, percussion, and metallophones, established its own setting in 2021.
The three players began as two, in the context of occasional Bowles and Westerlund percussion duo performances dating back to 2018. Fennelly provided the initial impetus to gather and play together with intentionality and discipline, as well as an harmonic adhesive and thickening agent in the grain and gravity of his harmonium and synthesizer.
As always, Bowles’s background as a pianist and drummer informs his approach to banjo, imparting a woodiness, a piney verticality and resinous tang. Westerlund’s training with Milford Graves is apparent in his polyrhythmic flow and its correspondences to human circulatory and corporeal rhythms.
They recorded their collective discoveries on their debut album “Shone a Rainbow Light On” (Paradise of Bachelors), which Uncut gave a "9/10" and Mojo Magazine listed as #3 of Underground Records of 2023, calling it “a record that spectacularly reconciles micro-detailed improv with deep-listening ambience.”
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