yyate :: Société oblique (Perceptual Tapes)

French sound artist and audio collage sculptor yyate (aka Vincent Caylet) crafts Société oblique as a delicate collision of noise and ambient haze, weaving field recordings, fractured electronics, and ephemeral textures into hypnotic drift. Released on Perceptual Tapes, the album hovers between abstraction and intimacy, where microscopic sonic gestures and dissolving tones evoke both fragility and quiet transcendence.

Serene collisions in sonic haze

French sound artist and audio collage sculptor yyate (aka Vincent Caylet) assembles loose soundscapes, field captures, and meandering data streams in a collision of noise and ambient haze via Société oblique on Perceptual Tapes. Hovering at the intersection of abstract electronics and sonic mirage, the album unfolds through microscopic blips and bleeps, surreal plateaus of tone, and cascading aural fluctuations—saccharine, docile, and deeply immersive.

Opening with “Oblique part one,” a sleek transmission sets the mood, unraveling minimal, nearly translucent sound shapes whose rhythms melt into sheets of static and sonic detritus (“Oblique part two”), or drift with featherlight flutter (“Oblique part four”). These sounds don’t shout; they dissolve.

As the sequence progresses, sonic clusters begin to loosen. Buried beneath the surface lie fragments that shimmer and shift—tracks like “Oblique part six” and “Oblique part eight” stumble upon rhythm amid warped audio echoes, brittle aural morsels, and shimmering debris. Here, sound feels untethered from time, each layer arriving with a fragility that borders on the ghostly.

Sound feels untethered from time ::

The real beauty of Société oblique lies in its restraint. Caylet doesn’t crowd the canvas; he sketches with silence, allowing negative space to breathe between fluttering signals and fractured pulses. It’s in these gaps—those liminal, nearly imperceptible transitions—where the album reveals its deepest emotional textures. Every rustle, hiss, and decaying tone is placed with precision, as if capturing a fleeting signal from some distant, slow-moving frequency.

Arguably among the year’s most refined works of static-laced beauty, final pieces “Oblique part nine” and “Oblique part ten” scatter across the listening field like post-storm haze—distant, delicate, and full of lost transmissions. This is a work of serene disarray, quietly ambitious, elegantly restrained, and incredibly easy to drift within—a masterclass in ambient minimalism, where absence is as powerful as presence.

Société oblique is available on Perceptual Tapes. [Bandcamp]