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“Setting”


“at Public Records”


Released Sept 5, 2025

order: Digital (Bandcamp)

The third live report from Setting, ‘at Public Records,’ finds the trio outside their home state of North Carolina and inside the hearts and minds of the New Yorkers who choose to keep their ears to the dirt.

Best Experimental Music on Bandcamp, Sept ‘25

“...cycles through modes that hint at the uncanny and the sublime and conjure up spectral visions that make you question everything in your surroundings” - Aquarium Drunkard 2025 Year in Review

“at Eulogy”


Released Sept 6, 2024

order: Cassette / Digital (Bandcamp)

A second live report from Western North Carolina: the smoldering, incandescent ‘at Eulogy’ finds Setting returning to Asheville after a run of performances up and down both coasts.  Returning sun-baked and wind-worn, their performance here crackles with vitality, glowing with an inner light both photosynthetic and magmatic.  Where ‘at Black Mountain College Museum’ floated and weaved aloft the mountain thermals, ‘at Eulogy’ chooses to stalk the underbrush, eyes aglow and limbs akimbo.  Captured with multi-track clarity and mixed for maximum impact, ‘at Eulogy’ presents a deep focus, saturated snapshot of Setting’s specific brand of limbic dynamism while also suggesting neural pathways forward for their next studio LP.

Bandcamp Album of the Day

“at Black Mountain College Museum”


Released Dec 1, 2023

order: Digital (Bandcamp)

Following a string of dates across the Midwest, from a low-slung backyard in Louisville to the Driftless hills of Wisconsin, this recording finds us responding to what seems to be an unanswered question posed by those previous performances: which criteria of group improvisation connote forward movement? Or maybe: which elements are born of this moment, and which are the fruits of previous plantings? Distinctions irrelevant in the playing become something else upon listening – a flowing out from and also back into. A coursing. Waves churned from the pebbled underneath: rising, crashing, dissipating, but all of one body. What need to ask whether waves move forward? Or if they move at all?

Shone A Rainbow Light On


Released Sept 29, 2023 
(Paradise of Bachelors)

order:
Digital / Physical


“Like Fripp and Eno holed up in a mountain cabin looking for UFOs, Setting’s debut is a luminous slice of kosmische Appalachia that’s like scanning the horizon until you lose all separation between earth and sky.”
– Aquarium Drunkard 2023 Year in Review

FUTURE 


March 2 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox - w/ Made of Oak
March 9 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox - w/ Edsel Axle
March 16 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox - w/ Nathan Taylor
March 23 - Durham, NC - Shadowbox - w/ OIL (Casey Proctor & Trevor Reece)
March 28 - Knoxville, TN - Big Ears Festival - tix
May 12 - Charlotte, NC - Snug Harbor - tix
May 15 - Saxapahaw, NC - Haw River Ballroom (Album Release show) w/ Walt McClements - tix
May 16 - Asheville, NC - AyurPrana Listening Room - tix
June 26-28 - North Adams, MA - Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival @ MASS MoCA - tix
July 30 - Aug 2 - Happy Valley, OR - Pickathon - tix



PAST


The North Carolina Piedmont-based trio of Setting brings together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative, explorative mindsets from groups such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations. Multi- instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of ease and wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Dedicated improvisers with years working together, the band has developed their own idiosyncratic vernacular and sense of flow. Setting’s self-titled album (Thrill Jockey) is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures. Setting harnesses the euphoria of communal creation.



(top photo by Graham Tolbert; kaleidoscopic photo by Will Warasilla; drawings by Field of Grass)


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