Listening Tip May 2026: “Immutable Traveler” by Tangent Mek

“Immutable Traveler” by Tangent Mek was released as a physical CD on March 6, 2026, on Ligne de crête / Carton Records, and had already been released digitally in June 2025 on Montagne Noire.

Tangent Mek, that is Anouck Genthon on violin, Marina Tantanozi on flute, and Anna-Kaisa Meklin on viola da gamba.

It is a very personal, intimate album with which the musicians take the listeners into an intense listening space. In an honest and careful way they bring together origin, identity, history, and the present, interweaving and reanimating them. The three engage in this discourse with great depth. At the same time they maintain a lightness that casts a refreshing perspective – or rather a new way of hearing – on the question: who am I, and which relationships, encounters and places, which stories transform me?

The music was recorded during a cold week in November 2023 in the Benedictine abbey of Sorèze, as part of a GMEA residency. The choice of place was of great importance to the three. The recording took place in two rooms: the “Blue Room” and the “White Room”, with different acoustics, both rich in reverberation and overtones. The space itself strongly shapes the pieces.

The pieces are of very different lengths but all unfold exciting sonic spaces and atmospheres. They are coherent in themselves and at the same time charged with vibration. The music moves between noise, drone, and distant traces of folkloric fragments.

Very touching is the second track, in which Tantanozi also uses her voice. Inspired by a Greek songwriter she sings in Greek and also quotes a text by Etel Adnan (“The Morning After My Death”).

It is interesting how both the musicians’ origins (France, Finland, and Greece) act as a background, as well as their shared musical context. All three are very conscious musicians whose development continues clearly and consistently, as their individual projects also show.

I think there is a lot of love in this recording, but also the courage to look closely and listen: to filter from one’s own existence and creative work, to refine and finally let go, in order to let this inner space resonate outward, to reimagine it and become it again.

I really enjoyed this recording and have listened to it many times. Its effect on me is somehow uplifting and neutralising. I feel alive and light afterwards.

Enjoy!