Syldag’s Cyberilla trades in noise, drone and seven tracks that resist easy listening
Vendôme, France, isn’t a city that turns up often on the experimental ambient map, but it’s where Syldag recorded Cyberilla, released on 11 June 2025 after eight months of sessions running from July 2024 to March 2025. The album lands at Other Voices as a genuine outlier: seven tracks, two of them pushing towards the fifteen-minute mark, built on a logic that makes no attempt to accommodate the listener. Syldag handles instruments, vocals, words, sound, production and mix single-handedly; mastering comes courtesy of Caleb D., who also shares artistic direction on the record. This is largely a solo project with one trusted collaborator brought in at the final stage, and that shows in the coherence of the result, if not always in its accessibility.
Cyberilla is not easy listening. The record moves between dark ambient and passages of abstract noise, with structures that run far beyond conventional song length. There are effectively two modes at work here: tracks that establish a melody and hold it while layers accumulate on top, and tracks that abandon melodic footing altogether in favour of pure noise.
Steppe: the least welcoming opener possible
The album opens with “Steppe” (02:43), a total abstract noise piece that reads as a statement of intent. There’s no concession here: if this kind of sound doesn’t land with you, “Steppe” won’t change your mind. It’s the shortest track on the record and also the most direct in refusing any conventional way in.
Snow Sparkling and the case for patient layering
“Snow Sparkling” (14:58) shifts register entirely. It’s the first of the record’s extended pieces, far more melodic and chill than the opener, and its structure reveals Syldag’s working method: a base and a melody stay constant across the full fifteen minutes while different layers are gradually added on top. There’s no dramatic development or sharp turns, just a patient accumulation that rewards close attention.
Depression Toundra Pulse: the record’s dark centre
With “Depression Toundra Pulse” (12:09) Syldag sums up Cyberilla‘s intentions best, starting with its title. It opens on a pulse and a dirty kick that introduces a more danceable edge, an approach to experimental techno filtered through a darkness that never lifts. As the minutes pass the track builds without ever losing that grim foundation. Purely instrumental, it’s by some distance the album’s strongest piece, the point where Syldag’s layering method finds its most convincing shape.
Permafrost Ice Breaker: contained epic
“Permafrost Ice Breaker” (14:55) is the record’s other extended piece, and its reference points sit closer to the instrumental epics of Mike Oldfield or Pink Floyd. It’s still dark, but it lets in more light than “Depression Toundra Pulse”. As with the tracks before it, layers build progressively and give the structure real depth, one that never loses direction despite its length.
Blizzard: back to noise
“Blizzard” (06:36) returns to the pure noise of “Steppe”. It’s the track that leaves the least room for analysis: it does its job as a contrast point within the record’s sequencing, but doesn’t offer much beyond that.
Goin’ Bas Ass (With You): the radio face
“Goin’ Bas Ass (With You)” (05:47) is the only sung track on the record, and, not coincidentally, the one played on Other Voices Radio. Dark and experimental, with kicks that deliberately drop out of sync and a vocal that’s semi-robotic, stripped down to the bone. It’s Cyberilla‘s most accessible moment without abandoning the destabilising logic that governs the rest of the album.
Venus Vega Eleo: a closer that leaves orbit
The record closes with “Venus Vega Eleo” (07:04), built on a very simple, very spatial keyboard line, carrying direct echoes of the Close Encounters of the Third Kind score. It’s a closing track that abandons the terrestrial ground of the rest of the album and takes the listener to another planet, quite literally.
Other Voices verdict
Cyberilla isn’t the genre we enjoy most in this office, but engaging with this dark ambient and experimental record has been, above all, a sensory experience. Syldag builds an album running on two speeds: the abstract noise tracks (“Steppe”, “Blizzard”) work as necessary but short-lived interruptions, while the extended pieces (“Snow Sparkling”, “Depression Toundra Pulse”, “Permafrost Ice Breaker”) are where the project shows what it’s actually capable of, with “Depression Toundra Pulse” standing as the record’s clear peak. “Goin’ Bas Ass (With You)” offers the only vocal breathing room, and “Venus Vega Eleo” closes things out with an elegant exit into space. A demanding record, uneven in its impact, but honest in its refusal to compromise.
