Setting, the dynamo trio of Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund, have announced their self-titled, debut Thrill Jockey album Setting, out April 24th. The trio have also shared the album’s opening track “Heard a Bubble,” which fittingly froths up from ostinatos that increasingly layer with minutely evolving patterns, evoking a tender kosmiche over Saharan-style rhythms. Setting will be playing select shows throughout North America in 2026, including festival performances at Big Ears Festival and Wilco’s Solid Sound, with more dates to be announced.
The North Carolina Piedmont-based trio of Setting bring 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 is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaicked textures.
Setting was recorded with kindred traveler Adam McDaniel at Asheville’s Drop of Sun Studios, whose engineering and production work forms an indispensable piece of the album’s dynamism and luminescent fidelity. The album harnesses the euphoria of communal creation. “This is one of the most joyous albums I’ve made with other musicians. It felt like we were all in the slipstream,” notes Fennelly. Bowles adds: “Making this is maybe the easiest thing in my life; it’s not struggle music. This collaboration feels like it’s just coming out of the air, like it’s breathing.” Built on long exploratory sessions, the trio developed their own syntax and an ability to shift in new directions with finer and finer grains of detail. The pieces of Setting use that shared understanding of each other as players and the electric spontaneity of improvisation as a framework for more elaborate, impactful compositions in the studio. Westerlund elaborates, “When you keep playing together show after show, things take a different shape. The elements can be subtler and more specific, and there are more references of past performances and past discoveries to draw from.”
Setting tour dates:
March 28 – Knoxville, TN – Big Ears Festival
May 12 – Charlotte, NC – Snug Harbor
May 15 – Saxapahaw, NC – Haw River Ballroom
May 16 – Asheville, NC – AyurPrana Listening Room
June 26-28, 2026 – North Adams, MA – Wilco’s Solid Sound Festival @ MASS MoCA
* Setting album release show w/ Walt McClements
