Yan Wagner is quietly — or maybe not so quietly — building one of the most compelling no-skips albums of 2026. His latest release, “Aethernité” featuring Malik Djoudi, arrived today and floats in like a dream you half-remember from childhood: soft around the edges, emotionally precise, and unmistakably rooted in that mid-to-late-90s ethereal pop / electronica glow.
The title itself, “Aethernité,” loosely translates to “Eternity” (or “Ethereal Eternity”) in English, and it’s a perfect clue to what the song is chasing: timeless connection, that low-grade panic of drifting apart, and the hope that somewhere beyond the noise there’s still a signal. Sung entirely in French, the track moves through imagery where years collapse into seconds, bodies blur into each other, and voices pass like satellites just out of reach. Wagner and Djoudi sketch longing and dissolution with a kind of soft-focus precision — a meditation on whether we’re destined to be alone forever, or bound together in some stranger, more permanent way.
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Musically, “Aethernité” is a slow-burn shimmer.
Wagner leans into a palette that recalls the atmospheric pulse of 1998 — Portishead haze, Air-like weightlessness, the emotional translucence of early Mylène Farmer ballads — but it never feels like cosplay. The track breathes. The low end is velvet, the synths glow rather than glare, and the arrangement leaves space for the feeling to hit before the hook ever tries to. There’s also an organic thread running through the production: violin and cello drift in and out like passing headlights, adding a cinematic ache that keeps the song grounded in something human.
Then there’s Malik Djoudi, stepping in as guest vocalist with that signature androgynous softness — airy, intimate, and quietly devastating. He’s new to our world here at INYIM, and wow: what a voice. Djoudi doesn’t just complement Wagner, he changes the temperature of the room. His presence threads through the production like a second current, adding warmth, fragility, and emotional precision. It’s the kind of feature that doesn’t “arrive,” it lingers — it sinks in deeper with each replay
The release also continues to build anticipation for Wagner’s next album, expected in 2026, which — as his agency Podium puts it — “extends his ongoing exploration of human emotion through electronic sound.” If “Aethernité” is any indication, that exploration is getting sharper and more cinematic, less about making a scene and more about building a world you can live inside for four minutes at a time.
Both the song and the official Lyrics Video dropped today (1/14/2026), giving fans a full audiovisual entry point into this new era. At this point, we’re praying the full album lands on CD. There’s something about Wagner’s sonic universe that begs for a jewel case, a lyric booklet, and a lazy afternoon sprawled out with a Sony boombox, pretending it’s 1998 and the only thing that matters is hitting play again.
For more on Yan Wagner, visit: Yan Wagner’s official links
Sound off: What’s your favorite moment in “Aethernité” — and are you hoping Yan drops the full album on CD?
