Durham, NC · ambient · drone · acoustic ecstatic

Setting

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Durham trio (Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, Joe Westerlund) spinning shimmering acoustic-electronic drone — patient, radiant improvisation that rewards surrender.

Setting formed in 2021 in Durham, North Carolina, bringing together three musicians with long histories in experimental and folk-adjacent music. Nathan Bowles plays strings, keys, tapes and percussion, drawing on work as a soloist and in Pelt and the Black Twig Pickers.

Jaime Fennelly contributes synthesizers and harmonium, carried over from his long-running Mind Over Mirrors project and earlier work in Peeesseye. Joe Westerlund plays drums, percussion, metallophones and zither, with a background that includes Califone, Sylvan Esso and Jake Xerxes Fussell.

Setting's music combines acoustic instruments with drone and electronic textures, built through slow-developing improvisation rather than conventional song forms. Pieces tend to run long, shifting gradually rather than following fixed arrangements, with individual lines emerging and receding as they go.

Their debut album, Shone a Rainbow Light On, released in 2023 on Paradise of Bachelors, grew out of performances played in private rather than in public. A run of live dates along both U.S. coasts followed, sharpening the group's improvisation and arrangement.

That work fed into a self-titled second album, their first for Thrill Jockey, which added more programmed synthesizer material from Fennelly to the interlocking rhythms built by Bowles and Westerlund.

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ambientdroneacoustic ecstatic