With HAGEN, Mexico City–based duo Titanic composed of Venezuelan guitarist Héctor Tosta (I. la Católica) and Guatemalan cellist Mabe Fratti create a record that feels both timeless and otherworldly. Their second collaboration, the album draws on ancient impulses of myth-making while grounding its sound in the tangible resonance of strings and texture. It is a study in contrasts: tension and release, weight and levity, the earthly and the cosmic.

From the opening hum of Fratti’s cello, HAGEN envelops the listener in an atmosphere that feels ritualistic. The instrument’s deep, resonant tones become both anchor and launching pad, holding space for Tosta’s restless guitar lines, which weave intricate melodies that stretch toward the ethereal. This balance creates a sense of perpetual motion, as if the music itself is pulled between myth and reality.

The album’s title gestures toward the epic invoking legends that predate science and modernity. Just as myths once offered explanations for natural phenomena, HAGEN offers sound as a way of making sense of emotional landscapes. There is a narrative quality to these compositions: passages swell with near-orchestral grandeur before collapsing into fragile quiet, like waves rising and breaking against the shore.

Fratti and Tosta’s interplay is the heart of the record. Neither dominates; instead, they orbit one another, their instruments locked in dialogue that feels at once intimate and expansive. The result is music that resists easy categorization post-classical, experimental, and cinematic all at once yet never loses its human core.

Ultimately, HAGEN is not simply a collection of pieces but an immersive world. It asks the listener to surrender to its mythic pull, to step into a realm where sound becomes legend and strings retell humanity’s oldest stories. Titanic’s latest proves that even in an age of science, mythmaking through music still holds profound power.