Elena Setién - Unfamiliar Minds (2022)

Basque artist Elena Setién's smudgy atmospheres and charming experimental pop constructions evoke Jenny Hval or Susanna Wallumrød on her fourth solo album.
It's Setién's confident, warm-hearted vocals that center 'Unfamiliar Minds' - her opaque-hued production doesn't need bells and whistles, traces of electronics are left to wisp like spirits around a voice that carries words with poetic intensity. Setién's inspiration for the album came from Emily Dickinson's romantic poetry, which gave the Copenhagen-based artist a new sense of confidence in written English. For the production, her influence was drawn from conversations she had with Terry Riley and a soundtrack collaboration with Basque producer Xabier Erkizia.
The result fuses these influences remarkably well, highlighting Setién's poetic language with soundtrack-like backdrops of flute and distant pads on 'New (Original)', and with rumbling industrial synths on the evocative 'Such A Drag'. There's a fancifully windswept quality to her songwriting that allies it sonically with Jenny Hval's eccentrically brilliant "Blood Bitch" - it's a record we reckon will grow and grow.

Tracklist:
1.01 - Elena Setién - 2020 (3:36)
1.02 - Elena Setién - Situation (3:01)
1.03 - Elena Setién - I Dwell In Possibility (4:04)
1.04 - Elena Setién - New (2:28)
1.05 - Elena Setién - Such A Drag (3:46)
1.06 - Elena Setién - In This Short Life (3:48)
1.07 - Elena Setién - This Too Will Pass (2:33)
1.08 - Elena Setién - Unfamiliar Minds (3:11)
1.09 - Elena Setién - No Trace (3:04)
1.10 - Elena Setién - Water (4:58)