Tag Archives: InFiné

New music – Julianna Barwick & Mary Lattimore: Melting Moon (InFiné)

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adapted from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Julianna Barwick and Mary Lattimore have formed a formidable duo to release a new album, Tragic Magic, due out on 16 January 2026 via InFiné. Today they release the new single Melted Moon, one of “seven immersive, evocative songs” that make up the album. The press release details how, “together in freeform dialogue, voice and instrument, Barwick and Lattimore render a meditation on tragedy, wonder, and the restorative power of shared experience.”

The story continues: “Co-produced by Trevor Spencer (Fleet Foxes, Beach House), Tragic Magic came together in just nine days, a testament to the “musical telepathy,” as Barwick puts it, that has developed between the two artists over the years traveling the world as friends and tourmates. Sessions crossed improvisation with loose ideas they arrived in Paris with from Los Angeles, shortly after the January 2025 wildfires while still reeling for their community.

Barwick and Lattimore were given access to the extraordinary instrument collection of the Philharmonie de Paris’ Musée de la Musique in partnership with InFiné. The two artists embraced a divine setting, overwhelmed by the beauty and history at their fingertips. Lattimore selected three harps tracing the evolution of the instrument from 1728 to 1873, and Barwick chose several analog synthesizers that have shaped decades of exploratory music, including the Roland JUPITER and Sequential Circuits PROPHET-5, among other treasures.

“We were so lucky to have access to this experience. There was a lot of reverence, working with people with such warmth and enthusiasm, bringing these instruments into a modern context, literally taken off the shelves of the museum,” says Lattimore. “We wanted to honor the past while making music that we feel is a true expression of ourselves,” Barwick adds.

Today’s release of Melted Moon is accompanied by a video of Barwick and Lattimore performing the song live. Directed and edited by Joel Kazuo Knoernschild, the performance was filmed at Lou Lou’s Jungle Room at the Lafayette Hotel in San Diego this past April.”

The first single, Perpetual Adoration, is followed by the album’s closing track Melted Moon, a direct response to the Los Angeles wildfires in January 2025. The bold strokes of Lattimore’s harp soften as a calming chord progression asserts itself, before Barwick’s seraphic vocal adds a beautiful counter melody.

Barwick recalls “packing up her life under the dark ash clouds, “What do I need for these trips, but also, what do we need if we can’t come back to this house?” Lattimore lends a harp refrain that loops and echoes in the eventide, a measure in which she plays above as Barwick, uncharacteristically free of effects, offers her lyrics in poignant clarity, both haunting and hopeful (“Under the melted moon / The lights are all out / A strange taste in my mouth / You may never go home again / At least not the home you know”).

The notion embodies Tragic Magic as a whole: two artists and friends processing life through music, observing moments and working through emotions, contributing what they can to the world, within a lineage of creative expression and visionary invention represented by the very tools they used to realize this project.

Published post no.2,688 – Wednesday 15 October 2025

New music – Vanessa Wagner – Philip Glass: Etude no.8 (InFiné)

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from the press release by Ben Hogwood

Vanessa Wagner continues her exploration of Philip Glass’s piano works with Etude No. 8, released on September 5th.

“Etude No. 8 is one of the most mysterious pieces of the cycle and undoubtedly the most lyrical of Book I. It begins with an ethereal unison between the right and left hands, sounding like a question, a call, and resolves into a phrase with a theme of heartbreaking tenderness. The central section, with its deep basses and 3-against-2 rhythmic sway, carries us into a universe of dark, passionate turmoil before returning to the initial unison—pure and bare, like a moment of renunciation. In just a few minutes, Philip Glass takes us through multiple emotional landscapes, all infused with gentleness, melancholy, and depth.” – Vanessa Wagner

Published post no.2,651 – Monday 8 September 2025

New music – Vanessa Wagner: Philip Glass – Étude no.14 (InFiné)

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by Ben Hogwood, edited from the press release

Vanessa Wagner has today revealed the next instalment of her forthcoming album release of Philip Glass Etudes, due for release on 13 July from the InFiné label.

“After more than thirty years spent playing, interpreting, and working on the great repertoire, Philip Glass’s music has, in a way, almost revolutionized my life as a musician,” confides Vanessa Wagner.

The label describe how “in Etude no.14, so often filed away as a mere “transitional” study, Wagner uncovers a central engine of Glass’s language: the art of turning motif into living gesture, pattern into emotion, structure into an open-ended form.”

Published post no.2,538 – Tuesday 20 May 2025

Switched On – Various Artists: InFiné Ambient (InFiné)

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What’s the story?

InFiné have been extending their reach with a clutch of interesting digital compilations of late, including Club InFiné and InFiné Rewind 2024.

The French label is largely known for its experimental strands, but they have a far musical reach – as this cosmopolitan ambient collection shows.

What’s the music like?

The mix immediately reaches its goals through the soft beats of Murcof and the beautiful sounds of Brian Eno refracted through the piano of Bruce Brubaker, whose take on Music For Airports 2/1 will soothe any fevered brow. The same can be said for Vanessa Wagner’s piano, Struggle For Pleasure viewed through the hazy viewfinder of GAS.

There are some long form ambient epics here too, in the form of Gaspar Claus with the slightly disquieting Inside, and an epic take on Carl Craig’s At Les from Abul Mogard. Elsewhere Loscil takes the slowly oscillating piano of Murcof x Wagner’s Avril 14th (Aphex Twin), opening it out in timeless widescreen. The track leads seamlessly into Cubenx’s Human Dilemma.

Does it all work?

It does indeed, especially when experienced as a 13-track whole. As a bonus, if you visit the compilation’s Bandcamp page you get helpful biographies of all the ambiently inclined InFiné composers and musicians.

Is it recommended?

Very much so. InFiné know exactly what they’re doing with this compilation, providing aural balm whenever the listener needs it.

Listen / Buy

Published post no.2,527 – Thursday 8 May 2025

New music – Vanessa Wagner: Philip Glass – Étude no.17 (InFiné)

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by Ben Hogwood

Today brings us news of an important project from Vanessa Wagner, a favourite of these pages. Étude No. 17 is the first excerpt from her complete recording of Philip Glass’s Études for Piano, set for release later in 2025 on the InFiné label.

The InFiné press release goes into detail on Glass’s etudes, which are fast becoming the most recorded area of his music:

“Through her approach, Vanessa Wagner helps establish these two books as a major cycle within the grand repertoire, on par with the études of Ligeti, Pascal Dusapin, and, before them, Chopin and Liszt.

While the first book was conceived as an instructional manual to push Glass’s technical limits with a piano, the second book envisions an imagined virtuoso pianist, demanding both precision and dexterity. Glass himself has rarely performed more than a few pieces from the second volume.

Legend has it that while working on his final four études, Glass pulled a collection of poetry by Allen Ginsberg from his bookshelf. A mythical figure of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg inspired a whole generation’s desire for travel—journeys that took the young Glass across Europe (notably France) and India, infusing his work with a singular tone. As he flipped through the book, he reportedly rediscovered a personal manuscript for a piece titled Magic Psalm, which would later become his Etude No. 17.

Through her interpretation, Vanessa Wagner brings to light the delicate balance between serenity and tension in this mesmerizing composition, capturing both its poetic, wistful quality and its cinematic contrasts—inviting listeners on a journey that is as reflective as it is unsettled, much like the ever-shifting landscapes of the Hudson River.”

Watch it here:

Published post no.2,477 – Tuesday 18 March 2025