Biography
Elena Setién has scored numerous films and television productions while also pursuing a path as a singer and songwriter across theatrical art song and atmospheric electronic textures. Five years as a member of the vocal jazz duo Little Red Suitcase preceded her first solo release, the 2013 theatric album Twelve Sisters, whose material drew from narratives preserved inside her own family. A 2019 single inspired by Moby Dick, recorded with harpist Mary Lattimore, accompanied her third full-length, Another Kind of Revolution, an album that embraced vintage keyboards and electronics in pursuit of a more atmospheric palette. Lyrics drawn from Emily Dickinson’s poetry appear throughout her hushed, haunting fourth album, Unfamiliar Minds, issued in 2022.
Born in Basque Country, Setién has lived in Denmark since 2002. In the late 2000s and early 2010s she recorded and toured with pianist Johanna Borchert in Little Red Suitcase; the duo earned three Danish Jazz Award nominations, each in the category of Best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. Traces of that jazz experience surfaced on her 2013 debut Twelve Sisters (ILK Music), a theatrical work for vocals, piano, and strings performed by Setién together with additional musicians on guitar, bass, and drums.
Her second solo album, 2017’s Dreaming of Earthly Things (Yellowbird, Enja Records), was co-produced with Mikel Azpiroz and expanded her instrumental resources to include vintage keyboards and synthesizers. Alongside Ignacio Bilbao she wrote the score for the 2018 film Oreina (The Deer). She later rejoined Azpiroz to create early 2019’s Another Kind of Revolution, which introduced guitar contributions from Steve Gunn and Andreas Fuglebæk and marked her first release on the Thrill Jockey label. That September she issued the Herman Melville-inspired track “Wreckage of the Hunt,” a collaboration with Mary Lattimore on harp and electronics.
The 2020 EP Mirande, a Basque-language project issued on Forbidden Colours and shared with Grand Days and Xabier Erkizia, came next; Setién and Erkizia also supplied music for the Basque television series Altsasu the same year. The spectral quality of those joint efforts anticipated the electronics and co-production (again with Erkizia) that define her fourth solo album, the Thrill Jockey release Unfamiliar Minds.
Born in Basque Country, Setién has lived in Denmark since 2002. In the late 2000s and early 2010s she recorded and toured with pianist Johanna Borchert in Little Red Suitcase; the duo earned three Danish Jazz Award nominations, each in the category of Best Vocal Jazz Album of the Year. Traces of that jazz experience surfaced on her 2013 debut Twelve Sisters (ILK Music), a theatrical work for vocals, piano, and strings performed by Setién together with additional musicians on guitar, bass, and drums.
Her second solo album, 2017’s Dreaming of Earthly Things (Yellowbird, Enja Records), was co-produced with Mikel Azpiroz and expanded her instrumental resources to include vintage keyboards and synthesizers. Alongside Ignacio Bilbao she wrote the score for the 2018 film Oreina (The Deer). She later rejoined Azpiroz to create early 2019’s Another Kind of Revolution, which introduced guitar contributions from Steve Gunn and Andreas Fuglebæk and marked her first release on the Thrill Jockey label. That September she issued the Herman Melville-inspired track “Wreckage of the Hunt,” a collaboration with Mary Lattimore on harp and electronics.
The 2020 EP Mirande, a Basque-language project issued on Forbidden Colours and shared with Grand Days and Xabier Erkizia, came next; Setién and Erkizia also supplied music for the Basque television series Altsasu the same year. The spectral quality of those joint efforts anticipated the electronics and co-production (again with Erkizia) that define her fourth solo album, the Thrill Jockey release Unfamiliar Minds.
Albums
Singles
