The North Carolina Piedmont-based outfit Setting finds three deeply intuitive musicians—Nathan Bowles, Jaime Fennelly, and Joe Westerlund—summoning rhythms and textures from deep within the Appalachian soil.
The group’s collective resume boasts contributions to projects such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Pelt, Sylvan Esso, Black Twig Pickers, Acid Birds, and Jake Xerxes Fussell. In Setting, these disparate histories are distilled into a transportive sound that unfolds like an extrasensory conversation among musicians who know when to push and when to leave space in their music.
The album’s meticulous textures underscore the warmth and flow of a group that moves as a single organic unit, blending synths, banjo, zithers, cassette loops, keyboards, and hand percussion into hypnotic patterns that drift between exploration, minimalism, and ecstatic improvisation. The song “Heard a Bubble” shimmers and expands with a patient glow. “Derring-do” builds on a locomotive pulse that gathers force until it rattles the walls and lifts the roof clean off.
“Gum Bump” swirls like a weather system gathering at the horizon. Its slowly blooming pulse of harmonium, guitar, and percussion draws listeners into a meditative state. Each number builds, illustrating a singular gift for making expansive, transcendent music that blurs the lines between ritual and revelation, culminating in an immersive journey where every rhythmic turn opens onto a new horizon.
Director Morgan Maassen’s video for “What Kind of Fish is a Turtle,” offers a visual accompaniment to the song’s slowly-moving synth waves with striking detail.
For Thursday night’s show, Atlanta guitarist Mason Brown of Maserati makes a rare appearance performing under the name Brainworlds.
With Brainworlds, Brown makes music that feels like a transmission from the outer reaches of the cosmos—propelled by a motorik Krautrock drift. Each song unfolds in hypnotic layers of pulsing rhythms and spiraling synthesizers.
Brown’s immersive soundscapes provide an ideal entry point into the night’s meditative terrain.
$20. 7:30 p.m. (doors). 8 p.m. (show). The Earl. 488 Flat Shoals Ave SE.
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