2024 was a great year. Real Gone celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. It was the website’s most successful year to date. We picked up a lot of new supporters and covered a wealth of new music. Our detailed reviews continued to be popular with the readers, and our Singles Bar really caught the attention of those looking for a quicker fix of new music.
Tag Archives: set feux
The Real Gone End of Year Round-Up 2024
It’s been another great year at Real Gone. We’ve reviewed countless albums and EPs. We’ve covered a record number of gigs (with Simple Minds and Deacon Blue being particular standouts), and gained support from a wealth of new labels and PR teams. It’s also been the first full year online for our popular Singles Bar – allowing us to take a look at various individual tracks and submissions – which has provided a massive extra stream of traffic.
It’s been a superb twelve months for music, and it’s time to shine a light on the many talents we feel have helped to make our site interesting. We’ve featured a wealth of new stuff. As usual, rock has provided the backbone of Real Gone’s musical interests, but we’ve really gone all out to try and promote some of the most interesting things from other genres, which has made picking favourites a little harder this year.
Come On, Come In: Big Hits From The Real Gone Singles Bar, Year One
In May 2023, Real Gone ran a column highlighting some of the best digital singles that had come our way. We’d always shied away from singles, preferring instead to concentrate on detailed album and EP reviews, but too much good music was falling by the wayside. The column was an experiment, of sorts: it was a departure from what had gone before, but still came with the same enthusiasm. Would people embrace this new feature? Would “quick takes” weaken the Real Gone brand?
Watch: New video for Set Feux’s ‘Let Them Stare’
Set Frux released their self titled debut album on April 19th. The record’s blend of pop, light electronica, indie and dream pop creates a hazy listen, which is perfectly suited to a soundtrack of escapism. Diana Planche’s sense of melody is strong throughout, and although the band’s arrangements often have a retro quality, their songs play brilliantly in the present.
As part of the record’s ongoing promotion, Set Feux have created a video for one of the album’s stand out cuts, ‘Let Them Stare’.
SET FEUX – Set Feux
Set Feux features the talents of vocalist/keyboardist Diana Planche – a musician who first broke through as a member of Canadian indie pop band The Paint Movement – along with her husband Barzin, and wearenotwhoweare man Kevin Kralik. On this debut album, it often feels as if it’s Planche who’s in the driving seat, even if she doesn’t have complete artistic control. The material isn’t ever busy, but the very relaxed world that Set Feux creates, seemingly effortlessly, allows the album to be filled with all manner of fine music. In just nine songs, this self titled release takes in elements of light dream pop, mellow and almost soulful tunes, downtempo vibes that occasionally hint at the warm trip hop of Morcheeba, a pinch of light country and more besides. You might read the usual lazy claims that Kate Bush and Fleetwood Mac have been pivotal influences within the Set Feux sound, but if that’s the case, those never dominate the end result. The tunes here are far more lax, and even more distinctive in their own way.