I was in a quandry.
I couldn’t decide if should bring my inner tube – a three-foot wide cheeseburger – to this Friday night concert along the Eno River in Hillsborough, North Carolina. There were whispers of being able to float the river as you took in the music. But I was already dressed loudly in my neon beach volleyball shorts and Hawaiian shirt, and if the vibe wasn’t right for floating, I didn’t need to bring anymore attention to myself by lounging in an inflatable cheeseburger. The tube stayed in the car and I walked through the quiet hum of the neighborhood to the show.
Well, maybe not a show. “Irregular program of music in friendly environments” is what the flyer said, and how Joe Westerlund (percussion), Nathan Bowles (strings, keys, percussion) and Jaime Fennelly (harmoniums, synthesizers, piano zither) would prefer to classify their live sound sessions as musical trio Setting. Each member are celebrated sound ecologists in their own right within the North Carolina Piedmont’s surprisingly fertile community of avant-instrumentalists, all exploring different bio textures and soundscapes of primitive ambience and atmospheric looping, where tones move in the wash of audial tides instead of the flow of melodic rivers. This was the group’s third outing of the summer and probably the last one before the release of its debut recording Shone a Rainbow Light On on local label Paradise of Bachelors on September 29th. Experiencing these irregular rhythms along the banks of the Eno seemed like a dreamy way to slip into summer’s homestretch.
I walked around the back of a cute little house and followed the twinkling of chimes to an intimate riverside landing. Westerlund, Bowles, and Fennelly and their myriad of instruments and electronics were perched in what was essentially a tree fort. A smattering of kids skirted about as their parents followed them, while small bands of friends, enthusiasts, and odds and ends staked their tiny claims with blankets and chairs in the brush. It was a familial vibe, one curious and open to what lay ahead.
I myself was riding a gently rolling exuberance at where I found myself in life. I’ve been in the area for just under a year and roots felt like they were finally established. A hard couple weeks of work had just eased up and I had found out that day an old friend was moving to the area, one of a handful I was serendipitously reconnecting with. The summer felt new again and I was happy to soak in the musical eccentricity happening in this fairy grove by the river. Life was open and blossoming and I settled into its sweetness.
Nascent tones percolated on the breeze as the musicians stirred awake in ripples of swampy ambiance. Westerlund floated in a shallow rhythm, while Bowles cracked texture into Fennelly’s humid atmospherics. It felt like the scales of an alligator rising from the wet mud and baking in the morning sun.
As the trio emerged from the swamp and began to rummage through the acousticopic underbrush, I felt the need to move. I slowly began to circle the stage and crowd with my camera, stopping and starting in measured fits trying to find interesting angles while not disturbing people’s experience. I don’t know if I’m getting anything and the snaps of the shutter feel as loud as a firecracker in this quiet setting, though, I can’t imagine I’m any louder than one of the kids cooing about. I soldier on as gingerly as possible.
The sun streams through the trees in the fading smile of the day as the music warbles in a translucent mediation. A warm summer dusk is one of my favorite sensations and it’s not one that I’ve indulged in recently, though it’s bountiful this time of year. It’s a sobering thought of fruits not picked, but one I cant waste now that I’m tuned into the present vibration of this place and season. I let it drift out my mind and rise like smoke from the gently burning fire over my shoulder.
With the sun now completely out of sight, the mood changes. Fennelly transmits fuzzy, deep-wood undulations that Westerlund bristles up against with erratic shocks to his drum kit. Our terra-sonic compass was beginning to shift at its poles and we were all being reoriented to a new set of cardinal directions. Bowles was the one to lead us through the static tones as we followed his chilled, wavy loops like a river out of the wilderness. The band began to settle to leisurely pace again.
I checked the time. I thought it’d been half an hour, but they’d been playing for an hour and a half. I silently guffawed at the drone induced time warp I had passed through, though delighted at how in the moment I had been for so long. The moment was ripe to move on and pick other fruitful moments from the evening that lay ahead. So I packed up, enriched by Setting’s ambient summer rhythms and looked forward to another irregular program of music in a friendly environment, whenever that may be.
Maybe next time I’d bring my cheeseburger.
Boogixote 