Yann Novak

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Après Lifeblood of Light and Rapture en 2021, Reflections of a Gathering Storm en 2022, The Voice of Theseus en 2023 suivi de variations sur le même en 2024, Continuity s’inscrit dans la belle…continuité de la production de Yann Novak, artiste interdisciplinaire et compositeur installé à Los Angeles. Un fragment du texte de présentation vous donnera une idée de son ambitieux projet : « À travers trois longs morceaux, Continuity retrace la tension qui émerge lorsque des structures censées apporter la certitude deviennent les instruments de sa propre destruction. À mesure que nos systèmes de vérification se perfectionnent, ils deviennent paradoxalement des outils de manipulation plus efficaces. Chaque nouvelle couche de transparence semble créer de nouvelles zones d’ombre, de nouveaux espaces où la réalité peut être déformée.Ce qui est présenté comme un accès à la vérité est, en pratique, un moyen de contrôler quelles vérités sont accessibles et comment elles sont présentées. Construite à partir de 28 boucles d’enregistrements de terrain et de synthétiseurs, Continuity reflète la malléabilité même de l’information. Ses sources incluent des sons captés dans l’espace public – où l’acte d’enregistrement lui-même incarne la pulsion de surveillance, transformant l’expérience publique en données privées – ainsi que des messages vocaux capturés documentant l’instrumentalisation des systèmes d’autorité à des fins de manipulation. »

La musique de Yann Novak joue à merveille des transparences et des ombres, avec une dominante des secondes. Orgue et synthétiseur, sur “Metric of Caution”(Mesure de prudence), le premier titre, évoluent en terrain saturé, opaque, dont surgissent des chœurs ténébreux ou angéliques, on ne sait plus très bien. Les textures se recouvrent, laissent filtrer des bribes. Lorsque le son monte, l’opacité se densifie, tout en ne laissant plus passer que des vents de particules. En somme, le brouillage généralisé devient la règle. “Context Collapse” (Contexte d’effondrement) s’ouvre sur de lourdes percussions et un orgue sinuant dans le brouillard, des fragments mélodiques déchiquetés et réduits à des à-plat en arrière-plan. Il règne une atmosphère lugubre, plombée. C’est un paysage post-industriel dévasté où les décombres émettent encore de faibles vibrations lumineuses, où les courants sonores semblent des hordes de loups tant l’impression d’une sauvagerie absolue d’après l’homme s’installe!

Quant aux “Zones of Privacy” (Zones d’intimité, titre 3), elles sont envahies de parasites divers, n’émettent plus que des sons tronqués, privés de sens. Dans l’immense halo des systèmes ne s’entend plus qu’une plainte, ou le fantôme d’un hymne, agglomération de millions de messages indéchiffrables, dans une caverne de cauchemars moribonds.

Yann Novak signe un album d’une puissance noire sur l’effacement du sens dans un monde saturé d’informations.
— Dionys, Inactuelles, musiques singulières

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Best of 2025 Lists
Igloo Magazine: Best of 2025
Headphone Commute’s Best of 2025: Music For Bending Light And Stopping Time
Glumburger’s Weird Music: 50 “Best” albums of 2025 #27
ShumAmb: Favorite Music 2025 (222作品)  #48

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Do you ever feel like you’re being watched? That’s because you probably are. If you’re in public, you’re being captured by a maze of security cameras. Then you walk back home past rows of doorbell cameras to open your laptop and enter a virtual world of data collection, where every scroll and keystroke is logged and analyzed. This all-encompassing surveillance state promises safety and transparency, as if all this aggregate data will add up to the truth. However, as Yann Novak points out, the opposite has occurred—anyone can shape any narrative they want by picking and choosing from these new mountains of information. For Continuity, Novak did a bit of surveillance himself by recording in public places. He combined these recordings with spam voicemails where he was the target of deception: “​​This is Sergeant Jonathan Matts down here at the Dane County sheriff department. We were looking to establish contact with a Yann Novak…” The resulting album features 28 loops of field recordings and synths that can, like data in the real world, be mixed and matched to create nearly infinite juxtapositions; Continuity itself is just one possibility. Any combination of these sounds is likely to have the same effect, though, evoking an uncanny world of exposed privacy and eroded trust.
— Matthew Blackwell, The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp, July 2025, Bandcamp Daily

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Partendo da 28 loop di registrazioni ambientali e suoni sintetici Novak costruisce 3 pezzi che vogliono essere una riflessione sulla manipolazione delle informazioni, soprattutto quando i mezzi tecnici a disposizioni sono molto potenti e raf-finati. Sullo sfondo ci stanno le questioni dell’uso dell’Al come strumento di controllo sociale visto come eterogenesi dei fini (William Gibson docet). Musicalmente ne esce una ambient pa-cata, vagamente inquietante, come una specie di colonna sonora per “2001 Odissea nello spa-zio” al rallentatore. Con l’esponenziale crescita del flusso di dati, vuoi vedere che la vera disto-pia si nasconde nella lentezza?
— Girolamo Dal Maso, Blow Up Magazine

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Tre lunghe tracce: Metric of Caution, Context Collapse e Zones of Privacy, si estendono nell’oscura continuità di questo lavoro. Come affluenti notturni, sussurrano un racconto nel quale la promessa di trasparenza si dissolve nell’incertezza. Il dark ambient qui non è mera atmosfera: è un ordito di tensioni, un interrogare silenzioso del rapporto fra verità e controllo. In quest’epoca di apparente trasparenza dei media, il prisma deformante che tutto mostra tranne il vero, Novak costruisce architetture sonore che sembrano tradurre il suono in specchi deformati. Un lavoro che affascina, inquieta e obbliga a riascoltare il modo in cui siamo stati abituati a vedere o peggio, a sorvegliare, IL REALE.
— Mirco Salvadori, Rockerilla

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Album après album, Yann Novak construit un univers personnel en forme de miroir réfléchissant d’une époque rongée par l’omniprésence des images et de ses distortions.

Avec Continuity, l’artiste nous fait pénétrer dans une masse enveloppante à la noirceur accueillante, dernier refuge avant la disparition de toute trace de notre présence sur terre.

La beauté s’habille de lumières rasantes et de sonorités subtiles, aux allures de requiem des temps modernes.

Yann Novak manipule les contrastes, joue avec les tensions, sculpte les sons, écrit en lettre capitales la crémation d’une société catapultée dans une course à la mort en mode ralenti.

Les titres aiment s’évaporer et se diluer dans des axes déformés, reflétant avec justesse notre propension à esquiver les événements cruciaux de notre histoire, pour se laisser choir dans les bras d’un vide astral à la puissance carnivore. Sublime.
— Roland Torres, SilenceAndSound

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In case you wonder what the incomprehensible characters on the cover of Continuity mean: it’s an encrypted text that you can decrypt following Yann Novak‘s instructions here. (I won’t spoil the fun, just decrypt it).

It’s also the introduction to the complex conceptual background of the album – a problem we unfortunately face much too often: “the album explores how our mechanisms for establishing truth often function in direct opposition to their stated purpose”. One example of this, one of the most obvious perhaps: “Social media platforms, presenting themselves as spaces for free expression, function as sophisticated surveillance systems, where the very act of sharing becomes data for collection.” The message is loud and clear: beware of “systems that present themselves as guardians of transparency while simultaneously undermining our ability to grasp reality”.

Building the tracks on this album from 28 loops of field recordings and synthesizers, Novak translates the underlying concept to multi-layered soundscapes. After all, these “source materials include sounds collected in public spaces—where the act of recording itself embodies the surveillance impulse, transforming public experience into private data […] These sonic elements can be reconfigured and reorganized in response to different performance contexts, reflecting how information systems can be used to recontextualize data to manipulate perception”.

The music is comfortably immersive and all-encompassing in one way, but also dark and brooding in another. I wouldn’t really be surprised if there were subliminal messages hidden in these layers of sound. But that is something the encrypted cover text does not disclose. Of course not.
— Peter van Cooten, AmbientBlog

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Yann Novak’s Continuity is a haunting meditation on truth and transparency in an age saturated with data and simulations. Released by Room40 in July 2025, the album spans three extended sonic essays that treat the listener to a spectral architecture of looping field recordings and synth drones. Each piece – from “Metric of Caution” to “Zones of Privacy” – feels less like music than deep excavation into the spaces where systems meant to reveal end up concealing.

Novak positions his art between recording and revelation: loops recorded in public spaces morph into eerie soundscapes that feel surveilled rather than observed. Even a spoofed voicemail featuring a law enforcement script becomes another layer in the labyrinth, a reminder that deception often lives inside truth’s shadow.

Critics note how the tracks interlock seamlessly, like geological strata of bass drones, oscillating textures, and chords heavy with both melody and malaise. The progression is slow yet unrelenting: what seems stable gradually becomes disquieting, like meaning slipping through a sieve. The ambient palette never resorts to emptiness – a dense web of subtle detail rewards patient listening, offering new revelations at each spin.

Born in Los Angeles, Novak brings a hybrid identity to the project: influenced by his experience of dyslexia and partial color blindness, he treats sound almost as a corrective lens for perception, urging listeners to re-experience what they thought they knew. There’s a systemic irony in using “transparency” as camouflage: the clearer things appear, the murkier the terrain becomes, echoing modern surveillance systems that promise clarity but deliver control.

With Continuity, Novak crafts listening as an act of resistance – sound becomes political architecture, loops become critique, and layered textures index the paradox of information itself. It’s minimalist in structure but rich in implication: an unsettling yet compelling journey through the hollow core of our own connective frameworks.

Funny or touching? Perhaps there’s a wry smile hidden in the slipstream: in a world where “transparency” means curated exposure, Novak’s insistence on ambiguity feels like a gentle prank on reality. This album makes you reconsider what you think you hear – and maybe even what you’re told you can trust.
— Vito Camarretta, Chain D.L.K.

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Out now on Room 40 Records is a consequential three-song EP that ought not be overlooked. Los Angeles based multidisciplinary artist Yann Novak has masterfully created a poignant work that reflects our times and serves as a sobering lens through which to view our modern era. Continuity is a stunning blend of field recordings and looped synthesizer phrasings, depicting the often paradoxical and nefarious sides of technology that we’ve become dependent upon – from the illusion of freedom and privacy, to government transparency, social media, and more. With a wash of abated noise, near-dystopian ambient layers, obscured digital recordings, and ghostly ear candy, I find Continuity to be a fantastic backdrop for which to reflect on the state of the world in which we live.
— The Relay Station

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On his latest release Continuity, Los Angeles-based sound artist Yann Novak offers a deeply meditative and unsettling reflection on one of the defining anxieties of our time: the slipperiness of truth in an era dominated by surveillance, algorithms, and the weaponization of transparency. Released on Lawrence English’s long-running Room40 label, Continuity is a conceptual and sonic triumph—an ambient album that dares to interrogate the very structures through which we process and interpret the world.

Drawing inspiration from William Gibson’s Mona Lisa Overdrive, Novak adopts the name “Continuity” from a fictional AI designed to manage data, which ultimately transcends its original function to intervene in physical reality. Similarly, Novak’s Continuity maps how the tools created to bring clarity—government oversight, digital platforms, surveillance networks—often instead produce distortion, misdirection, and obfuscation.

Comprising three long-form pieces—”Metric of Caution,” “Context Collapse,” and “Zones of Privacy”—the album unfolds like a slow, deliberate unraveling of perception itself. Each track is constructed from 28 loops of field recordings and synthesized textures, forming a living archive of public and personal sound. From urban atmospheres to spoofed voicemail scams (“This is Sergeant Jonathan Matts down here at the Dane County Sheriff Department…”), the material becomes both source and metaphor: public experience transformed into private data, ambient life folded into a matrix of manipulation.

What sets Continuity apart is its refusal to settle into ambient music’s comfort zones. While the sonic surface may seem tranquil, there’s a persistent unease beneath—the kind of tension found in spaces of observation, in the awareness of being watched or recorded. Deep bass undulations and smeared harmonic washes stretch across wide stereo fields, with subtle interference: clipped voices, granular textures, an almost tactile presence of circuitry humming behind the veil. These aren’t just immersive drones—they’re carriers of embedded critique.

Each piece functions like a sonic model of how context can be collapsed and data repurposed to suit hidden agendas. The loops continually shift in shape and meaning, suggesting how even fixed information—like a recording—can be reorganized to say something entirely different, depending on how and when it is accessed. The result is music that mirrors the performativity of truth itself.

By the time Continuity closes, Novak has created not just an album but a conceptual framework. He asks us to consider how even our most trusted mechanisms of clarity—transparency, data, access—are susceptible to inversion. It’s not just about lies; it’s about the systems that present themselves as truthful while hollowing out our ability to discern reality.

This is ambient music with teeth. It’s subtle, cerebral, and profoundly political—an urgent reflection on how we live now, and how easily what we call “truth” can be rendered a mirage. Continuity is one of Novak’s strongest works to date, and a landmark release for Room40. Essential listening for those seeking depth, critique, and atmosphere in equal measure.
— Don Haugen, Igloo Magazine

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This off-label release by Dragon’s Eye Recordings label head Yann Novak explores various notions of misinformation in the form of three tracks of experimental ambient music, each about 10 minutes long. The source material consists of slightly more than two dozen field recording and synthesizer loops that Novak arranges and manipulates into something other than their original forms.

The pieces blend into one another in content and tone. Heavy bass elements combine with ominously lilting chords. There are slow progressions across windswept soundscapes, as well as subtly vibrating bass drones and sparse percussion. But these offerings are far from minimal and instead provide layers of detail like stratified geological structures. All tracks are dark with a strange character that is reminiscent of hearing sounds from the other end of a long tunnel. The sources are obscured and you feel as if you are only able to listen to a subset of their sonic emanations.

Continuity can be enjoyed on its own accord or as a statement of how so many aspects of our lives involve an element of deception. Whether we consider the media, the government, technology, or surveillance capitalism, there are lies nested inside of truths (and vice versa). Most likely a combination of deliberate acts and unintended consequences, these structures exploit a feature in our genetic and cultural encoding that was at one point beneficial for survival – an irrational fear of the other that leaves us open to manipulation.

Continuity is released today and it is a beautifully unsettling work that rewards careful listening as a reflection on the hidden frameworks that shape both sound and society.
— Mike Borella, Avant Music News

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“As an artist, I am informed by my unique perspective as partially colour-blind and dyslexic. In my work, I explore notions of perception, context, and diversity through the construction of immersive spaces that seek to heighten the audience’s awareness of their own direct experience.” Based in LA, multidisciplinary artist and composer Yann Novak has created a unique platform from which he explores both sound and light directing awareness to our own world of individual experiences. With a diverse body of work that ranges from installations and sound diffusions to ‘architectural interventions’ and the written word, Novak has seemingly performed almost everywhere including the Institute of Modern Art in Brisbane, the sadly-no-more Iklectik in London and his home state of California where he was recently awarded the honour of Cultural Trailblazer for 2021-22 by LA’s Department of Cultural Affairs. In amongst all this, Novak has been equally prolific with his musical output – in fact it’s something that has been a central part of his work for the last twenty years. And his new deep-listening album Continuity is the latest in a series of recordings that sees the American artist use sound to probe the nature of reality.

It was on Dragon’s Eye Recordings (set up by his father Paul Novak) that the junior Novak first made his musical mark almost two decades ago. And it is Dragon’s Eye where he now sits as creative director with one very clear mission: to promote marginalised voices within the field of experimental music; his being one. He established his objective on 2005 debuts Up Close and Fade Dis/Appearances with an extraordinary and highly personal sonic account of living with inhibited vision: finding the way between light and dark. And it is this theme that has continued to inhabit Novak’s work, right up to his last two releases 2023’s The Voice of Theseus and 2024’s The Voices of Theseus where he explores sameness, shared reality and perception.

Unsurprising then that ‘reality’ sits at the heart of Novak’s latest work, Continuity. With a title inspired by dystopian futurist writer William Gibson’s AI system that evolves beyond its prescribed informatic boundaries (a modern-day HAL), this is an album that explores the way in which the mechanisms used to establish truth are often at odds with their supposed purpose. Take, for instance, the way in which social media is routinely transformed from a place of free expression to one of surveillance; how government transparency initiatives are abused to create specific narratives; and how privacy itself has been transformed into a commodity.

Mastered by Australian ambient veteran, Lawrence English, Continuity comprises three pieces of composition that neatly creep into one another. Ambient to its core, this is a deep listening experience built from 28 loops of field recordings and synthesisers designed to reflect the way information can fall victim to its apparent malleability; more specifically, the way in which sound can be recontextualised to manipulate perception. A profound work that is probably best served by focus and attention, but in the spirit of versatility can also sit neatly in the background as ambient music was born to do. Testament, perhaps, to Novak’s point. Information – in the shape of sound – is a shapeshifter, its emotional impact determined by its possessor.
— Musique Machine

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Continuity bada paradoksalną naturę prawdy i przejrzystości we współczesnym krajobrazie informacyjnym. Tytuł albumu nawiązuje do sztucznej inteligencji z Mona Lisa OverdriveWilliama Gibsona — systemu, który przekracza swój pierwotny cel jako zbieracz i redaktor danych, ewoluując w stronę bezpośredniej ingerencji w świat fizyczny. Album zgłębia, w jaki sposób mechanizmy ustanawiania prawdy często działają wbrew własnym założeniom.

Od rządowych mechanizmów nadzoru po cyfrowe platformy obiecujące łączność i przejrzystość — te struktury nierzadko służą raczej zaciemnianiu niż wyjaśnianiu. Inicjatywy rządowe mające na celu zapewnienie transparentności stają się narzędziem konstruowania określonych narracji, gdy dostęp do nich jest selektywny i podlega rekontekstualizacji. Media społecznościowe, reklamujące się jako przestrzenie swobodnej ekspresji, funkcjonują jak wyrafinowane systemy inwigilacji — sam akt dzielenia się staje się źródłem danych do przetwarzania. Najbardziej podstępne jednak jest to, że prywatność została przekształcona z podstawowego prawa w towar — oferowany jako ekskluzywna usługa, podczas gdy użytkownicy są stopniowo wypychani z coraz bardziej monitorowanych przestrzeni publicznych.

W trzech rozbudowanych utworach Continuity śledzi napięcie, które pojawia się, gdy struktury mające zapewniać pewność stają się narzędziami jej podważania. Im bardziej wyrafinowane stają się systemy weryfikacji, tym skuteczniejsze stają się w manipulacji. Każda nowa warstwa przejrzystości zdaje się generować nowe cienie — nowe przestrzenie, w których rzeczywistość może być zniekształcana. To, co przedstawiane jest jako dostęp do prawdy, okazuje się sposobem zarządzania tym, jakie prawdy są dostępne i w jaki sposób zostają przedstawione.

Zbudowany z 28 pętli nagrań terenowych i dźwięków syntezatorowych, Continuity sam w sobie odzwierciedla plastyczność informacji. Materiał źródłowy obejmuje m.in. dźwięki zebrane w przestrzeniach publicznych — gdzie już sam akt nagrywania ucieleśnia impuls inwigilacyjny, przekształcając wspólne doświadczenie w prywatne dane — oraz przechwycone wiadomości głosowe dokumentujące, jak systemy władzy mogą zostać uzbrojone do celów oszustwa:

„Tu sierżant Jonathan Matts z wydziału szeryfa hrabstwa Dane. Chcieliśmy nawiązać kontakt z Yannem Novakiem. Proszę o pilny kontakt pod numerem *** *** ****. Powtarzam: *** *** ****…”
— transkrypcja sfałszowanego połączenia podszywającego się pod organy ścigania, 2024
— Anxious Musick Magazine

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Mit “Continuity”, das am 4. Juli digital bei Room40 erscheint, legt der in Los Angeles lebende Künstler Yann Novak ein Werk vor, das sich mit der Brüchigkeit von Wahrheit und Transparenz in gegenwärtigen Informationssystemen auseinandersetzt. In drei langen Stücken verbindet er Feldaufnahmen und Synthesizerloops zu einer ambienthaften Struktur, in der sich vieles unter der Oberfläche abspielt – eine dezente Dröhnung, aus der sich nach und nach klanglich greifbarere Elemente herauslösen. Orgelartige Höhen, Rauschen, einzelne perkussive Impulse und viel Hall setzen Akzente. Die Stücke entwickeln sich stetig weiter, ohne je in ein Ziel zu münden – als sei jeder Moment eine Zwischenstufe auf dem Weg zur nächsten, eine Bewegung, die sich selbst genügt. Der Titel “Continuity” scheint genau diese Struktur zu benennen: ein Zustand des ständigen Übergangs, in dem jede Form nur vorübergehend fest ist.

Im Hintergrund steht laut Begleittext eine kritische Auseinandersetzung mit Mechanismen der Informationsverarbeitung und -vermittlung. Inspiriert von der gleichnamigen künstlichen Intelligenz aus William Gibsons Mona Lisa Overdrive, thematisiert Novak, wie Systeme, die Klarheit und Orientierung versprechen – staatliche Transparenzinitiativen, soziale Medien, datenbasierte Kommunikationsformen – zunehmend dazu genutzt werden, Realität gezielt zu formen oder zu verzerren. Dabei wird auch der Akt des Aufzeichnens selbst zum Teil des Problems: Öffentliche Räume werden durch das Mitschneiden zu privaten Datenquellen, jede dokumentierte Stimme kann manipuliert oder in neue Kontexte gesetzt werden. Das Album ist, wie es ferner heißt, zugleich Produkt und Reflexion dieser Prozesse. Klangmaterialien lassen sich im performativen Kontext neu kombinieren, ganz so, wie Informationen auch jenseits ihrer ursprünglichen Bedeutung neu gerahmt und instrumentalisiert werden können. “Continuity” markiert eine Verdichtung dieser Dynamiken, ohne sie zu dramatisieren und lässt einen Strom entstehen, der seine Wirkung nicht aus der Konfrontation, sondern aus der konsequenten Offenlegung struktureller Widersprüche zieht.
— African Paper

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Gray resonance forms a living wall on “c0n73x7_c0ll4p53” from Yann Novak’s forthcoming album, Continuity. Loops of field recordings and synthetic tones seep into one another, layering like opaque filters over gravitation pulses and a vanishing image. The piece unfolds slowly, but nothing stays still, meaning slips sideways, cloaked in the very textures that seem to offer clarity. What feels initially like stability reveals itself as a shifting architecture, constructed not to reveal but to obscure. Sounds hover at the edge of recognition, reframed and recontextualized until intention dissolves. This is transparency as camouflage, where revelation becomes a tactic for distraction. Novak draws us into a sonic landscape shaped by contradiction, where the pursuit of truth becomes a loop collapsing under its own weight.
— Brad Rose, Foxy Digitalis