Nathan Bowles :: Seven Lefts
Photo: Matthew ‘Doc’ Dunn
Photo: Brad Bunyea
It’s been two years since Durham, North Carolina-based multi-instrumentalist musician, sonic savant, and all-around melodic magician, Nathan Bowles, released perhaps his most tonally transcendent and mesmerizing body of work to date, “Are Possible” with his trio consisting of double-bassist Casey Toll (Jake Xerxes Fussell, Mt. Moriah) and drummer Rex McMurry (CAVE). He’s since been hard at work with the spiritual supergroup Setting, who have released an incredibly diverse and textured body of work over the last few years, and have recently announced the release of their self-titled album at the end of April, but I digress. Bowles is a fundamental force of nature, and at this stage in his captivating career, the acclaimed banjoist has found sonic solace and psychedelic peace in the intensity of improvisation involving keyboards, percussion, and tapes for trepidatious texture on his most recent self-released effort, “Seven Lefts”. A spellbinding effort that blends macabre meditations with the dynamics of a dancing ritual, Bowles takes listeners on an epic journey through an atmospheric Amazon filled with celestial creatures and the feverish freedom found within the fibers of esoteric embrace. Bowles is no stranger to improv and the creative climate that endures the challenges, confidence, and blatant bravery that its sophisticated subjects step into when controlling the weird whispers found within those specified chambers.
Photo: Brad Bunyea
Photo: Brad Bunyea
The musician undoubtedly has roots in the awe-inspiring Appalachian traditions, from his time with the Black Dirt Oak, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, and Spiral Joy Band to his own projects, Bowles/Turner and the Nathan Bowles Trio. Still, somewhere along the way, his interests shifted towards the burning desire to explore the endlessness of eternity through experimentation. Recorded straight to cassette (4-trk & 1-trk) in various homes between 2023-2025, the album breathes an antique air into the room via an ancient A/C that only Bowles knows the creative combination to change its tonal temperature. The great Glenn Jones once said, "America's Instrument"—the 5-string banjo—has found a profound new exponent in Nathan Bowles. His writing for the instrument is exploratory, at times wonderfully dissonant, and always soulful; his playing sure-footed and hypnotic, and this collection of songs not only challenges new and old listeners of the musician’s prevalent past, but also for anyone who braves the weird winds of its crucial climate. Spread across the album’s atmospheric anonymity, a luring light appears about midway through the marrow of the meditative material just before disappearing again into the Occoneechee Mountains that hang high above the melodic mist where Bowles manifests his sonic seances for all to hear.
