Vanessa Wagner’s 2025 album Philip Glass: The Complete Piano Etudes culminates a long infatuation with Glass’s compositions. While focussing less on the dialogue between composer and producer cultivated in Study Of The Invisible, Inland, and Statea with Murcof, Glass’s music resonates deeply in the contemporary electronic world; this EP from InFiné’s Versions series hands the baton to a modern vanguard of composer/producers who radically reinterpret these singular piano materials.

Each version is an etude unto itself, demanding artists stretch their minds as they split Wagner’s prismatic performances into four potent elements, exemplified in a twofold expansion of the oft lesser explored ‘No. 20’. Inspired by Glass’s composition ‘Gone’ for Godfrey Reggio’s slow motion tone poem film Visitors, its enigmatic cascade of notes evolves in wildly different directions.

Sharp and aflame, Parisian synthesist and sound artist Aho Ssan’s version plummets to an awestriking buzz in a serrated tapestry of sonic manipulation, reconstructed from scratch. In stark contrast, Carmen Villain harnesses the texturality informing her more dub oriented Smalltown Supersound output on her snowier, crystalline rendition. Lofi bursts of air sputter and billow, amplifying the meditative intensity of Wagner’s complex harmonic ricochets.

Sparse notes describe the desertlike atmosphere of Lyon DJ and ambient soundscaper Tauceti’s ‘No. 2’ version: mournful arpeggios drift between visceral throbs in wistful romance, a choreography merging hazy post-club air with concert hall cinematics. Cucina Povera’s ‘No. 10’ version stems from the Finnish/Luxembourgish artist’s loop and vocal experiments, creating impossible plunderphonic performances with piano played by time travelling hands. Cantering chords gather into reverberant thunderclouds, echoing Wagner’s stretching and skewing of time in the arresting gravity of her recordings.