Thrill Jockey is ecstatic to announce the signing of Setting, the North Carolina-based trio of synthesist and harmonium player Jaime Fennelly (Mind Over Mirrors, Peeesseye), banjoist and percussionist Nathan Bowles (Nathan Bowles Trio, Pelt, Black Twig Pickers), and percussionist Joe Westerlund (Califone, Sylvan Esso, Jake Xerxes Fussell). Their Thrill Jockey debut album will be due out in Spring 2026. The trio will also be performing at Big Ears Festival in Knoxville that same Spring.
Born from an improvisational core practice, the trio’s work since their 2023 debut both incorporates and evolves beyond the instrumental affinities at each player’s roots, delivering sprawling, warm environs of thick drones and complex rhythmic interplay. Their blend of instinctive performance and considered arrangements, both on and off the stage, blur genre and compositional lines into something more akin to spontaneous composition, and their dynamic approach to arrangement and texture speaks to the inclusive nature of their group mind: evocative, form-gobbling, and other-worldly.
Check out more on the band here.
