SETTING

Booking Agent : Ricky Biondetti & Giorgio Salmoiraghi

Setting is Nathan Bowles (solo/trio, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers) on strings, keys, tapes, and percussion; Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors) on synthesizers and harmonium; and Joe Westerlund (solo, Califone, Sylvan Esso, Jake Xerxes Fussell) on drums, percussion, metallophones, and zither.

Setting established its own setting and found its footing in regularly scheduled improvisational sessions outside Westerlund’s home in Durham, North Carolina, beginning 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. After the release of their acclaimed debut LP ’Shone a Rainbow Light On,’ (Paradise of Bachelors 2023), a record borne of performances in private rather than in public, Setting honed their group approach to improvisation and arrangement via a string of dates up and down both U.S. coasts.

These developments were documented via a couple of live reports, both from Asheville NC (‘at Black Mountain College Museum’ and ‘at Eulogy’) but recorded 9 months apart, each indicating a continued honing of methods and direction. Further rehearsals to develop these ideas, including Fennelly’s incorporation of more programmed synthesizer material into the Bowles/Westerlund octopus polyrhythm, took that direction and paved the way for the sessions that are producing their 2nd forthcoming LP: a clear evolution of their group voice and a reassertion of their performative ethos in the wake of the on-stage dynamism developed over these past two years.

Setting has been presented by Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Black Mountain College Museum, Hopscotch Festival, Solar Myth, Public Records, and The Lab, amongst others.

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Tourdates

No shows booked at the moment.