Elena Setién - Moonlit Reveries

Multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Elena Setién uses her sweeping vocal range and delicate arrangements to create a universe where dream worlds converge with reality. Her compositions, grounded by her remarkable voice and her guitar or piano, ripple with textures and thoughtful details. Setién’s masterfully allegorical songs are both emotionally immediate and provoking. A musician’s musician, Setién has drawn collaborators from far and wide, from her improvisational duo Little Red Suitcase to more recent collaborations with Steve Gunn, Mary Lattimore, and fellow Basque musicians Xabier Erkizia and Grande Days. For Moonlit Reveries, a hallucinatory promenade of mood and rhythm, Setién is joined by renowned drummer/percussionist Glenn Kotche of Wilco.

At the core of Moonlit Reveries is the inspiration that Setién and Kotche found in one another. The two met while Kotche was touring Spain with Wilco, Kotche having been a fan of Setién’s 2022 album Unfamiliar Minds. Immediately the two started discussing collaboration which Setién began by using a series of unique drum patterns from Kotche’s “A Beat A Week” series as the basis for tracks like “Surfacing” and “Asking”. Kotche then sent in fresh drum takes for select pieces that embellished the frameworks set by Setién. Though not every piece features his drumming, his presence on the album invigorated Setién’s desire to delve further into rhythm as an avenue of expression, incorporating more Latin-influenced rhythmic architecture to her music than there previously has been. Says Setién, “Funnily enough, I, being a Spanish artist, sought inspiration in the rhythms of a Chicago drummer to reach something with a Latin feel to it. A somehow surrealistic way to get there.” The songs of Moonlit Reveries also make use of more guitar than Setién previously had ever explored, which Setién traces back to Steve Gunn introducing her to the music of Bridget St. John. “What fascinated me right from the beginning, was the calmness in her voice and her low register. Her music inspired me to try to write songs with a guitar rather than a keyboard: there's more space for the voice and the sound qualities of both voice and guitar kind of melt into each other.”