Fusing dreamy, occasionally bittersweet, and nostalgic pop with lush vocal harmonies, ambient synths, guitars, and saxophone, Set Feux, led by Diana Planche, delivers a distinctive and emotive sound that is poised to create ripples with their upcoming release, ‘Set Feux.’ Diana Planche’s musical journey took a winding path, starting with her joining The Paint Movement in 2010, leading to extensive touring across Canada. In 2015, Planche, along with longtime collaborator Kevin Kralik (wearenotwhoweare, Mass Paves), and her husband, Barzin, came together to form Set Feux.

The album, recorded in Toronto and Hamilton, explores themes of love, passion, isolation, and the profound quest for self-discovery. The tracklist of ‘Set Feux’ takes listeners on a journey through these emotional landscapes. In the standout debut single, ‘Say It Again,’ Set Feux seamlessly blends piano and infectious rhythm, creating a rich and reflective composition, complemented by Planche’s signature enigmatic vocals. Reflecting on the track’s themes and inspiration, Planche provides insight into the profound emotions embedded in the music, “Sometimes I feel unknown to myself and I’m searching for the world to reflect myself back. The song explores the theme of the multiplicity that exists in all of us. I think when I wrote the song, I was remembering the loneliness I felt in my childhood alongside a close spiritual connection. The song is partly about a longing to recapture some of that.”

Listen to the track below…

Read the interview…

Hey! We’ve started 2024, how has your year been so far?

I think the best part of my year thus far has been the release of our first single off the album, “Say it Again”. We spent years working on these songs, so I’m super grateful to finally be able to release them into the world and even more grateful that people have responded positively.

Set Feux’s debut album releases later this year, how are you feeling about the project and its release?

I can’t help but feel a tremendous amount of gratitude to everyone who contributed to the album and a sense of relief that we managed to complete it. At times, I wasn’t sure we’d ever finish it. So, to be at the stage where we can share it with people, feels truly wondrous. I’m really looking forward to sharing the rest of the songs in the coming months.

The album took over 5 years to complete, could you share your creative process behind the album?
I have an all or nothing obsessional quality, which allows me to dive into my work for long extended periods of time. It also becomes necessary to take time away and retreat to other things, which sometimes makes it difficult for me to return to the original work. This is partly why the album took as long as it did to make.

I definitely enjoy collaborating with others. It can be the driving force behind much of my creativity. This album was truly a collaborative piece between me, Barzin and Kevin Kralik. Most of the songs started off on the piano. I’d spend a considerable amount of time working on a melody, which for me was the most important part. Once I was happy with it, I’d share my ideas with Kevin and Barzin and we’d structure a song around it. Some of the lyrics would come right away, but most of the time I’d write the lyrics after the musical structure was complete. This is definitely where you can see the unconscious mind at work. Often when I’m writing a song, the early lyrics are nonsensical, but sometimes there’s one or two words or phrases that have meaning and you can build a whole song around that. For example, when Barzin and I wrote Jumbotron, from the start, the chorus lyric was, “I’m like a jumbotron, I like to put it on the big screen” and I thought the lyric sounded ridiculous. It felt like a parody of some kind. But as we continued to develop the song, no other lyric fit better than that one and we embraced the fact that it was the best line for the song. I suppose that’s part of the mystery of song writing, one never really knows where the ideas come from, but you embrace that mystery and hope something meaningful can come from it.

Could you share what narratives and messages you convey with the album?

Over the past five years I’ve experienced a lot of personal change. I got married in 2019 and a year later the world was thrown into a global pandemic. I think our eyes opened up to something some of us hadn’t seen before and it really divided people. We were also trying to start a family of our own and I struggled a lot with that. It was super hard navigating the highs and lows and I still have trouble talking about it. Writing music was deeply cathartic. It wasn’t till we completed the album, where I began to notice connections between my songs. Upon reflection, I can see I kept circling back to my childhood and I was experiencing a yearning to return to parts of it.

How do you manage inspirations and creative changes over this extended period?

I think you have to sort of embrace the inspiration and creative changes as they come and as they go. Much like our thoughts and emotions come in waves, so too does inspiration and creativity. The nice part about making this record with Barzin and Kevin was that I wasn’t alone in making decisions. I had their beautiful minds to help me. Barzin would assemble wonderful musicians on a track, who would bring out some of the sounds he or I were hearing in our heads. Kevin would contribute his own experimental creativity and we’d have this truly unique song that I don’t think I could have created without them. That’s what I love about collaboration, you almost always end up somewhere very different from where you started but the transformation can be exciting and surprising. I think the record really benefited from having three unique musical minds working together.

You’ve toured Canada with The Paint Movement, and Europe with Barzin, how did this shape your musical journey?

I have some wonderful memories of playing with the Paint Movement; we had the opportunity to open for some great Canadian bands and meet so many lovely fans. Canada is geographically a really huge country, and it isn’t easy for bands to tour because the drive between cities is often a great distance. The weather is also very unpredictable. We had a few close calls on the road traveling from one city to the next. However, the fans are appreciative when you make the journey to play in their city and since I never really had the opportunity to travel across Canada like that before, I was really inspired by the vastness of our country and was touched by the humanity in it. When I toured Italy with Barzin, I was astonished by the abundance of beauty everywhere. From the landscape to the history and culture, as well as the generosity of his Italian fans, it made the whole experience quite enchanting. I think touring any place in the world is enlightening, because it brings to life the people who are listening and resonating with your music, which is quite a gift.

Your influences range from R&B/soul to pop/folk, how do you draw from such distinct styles to form your own sound?

That’s a great question. I’m sure it has something to do with the unconscious mind and how it absorbs so many things without us being consciously aware of it.

I think I’ve always loved all kinds of styles of music, from growing up singing in church choirs, music theatre productions, a Middle Ages/ renaissance vocal ensemble to playing in an indie rock band. I’m less interested in genre and more interested in the feelings that music can stir up in me. If a song elicits a strong emotional connection, then I’m hooked. When I sit down to write a song, it starts from an emotional place, and it’s usually only once the song is complete that I can step back and say, it sounds like this or that. But while I’m in the process of writing, I’m usually not conscious of any specific inspiration, it all comes from whatever feeling I have at that moment.

For the rest of 2024 and aside from your debut album, what can fans expect from you in 2024?

Playing some live shows with the band is what fans can expect to see next from me. I have been performing the songs live as a trio with Kevin and Jason Loftman, who plays sax. This year I’m looking to grow the band and add some other key players like Dave Macdougall, who plays drums on the record. Barzin and I have also talked about playing as a duo, and doing a little European tour together, so hopefully we can make that happen. Stay tuned.

Watch the video…