French sound artist Bastien Pons delivers a gripping, slow-burning meditation on perception and fragility with his debut album Blinded. Across seven tracks, Pons constructs a world where silence carries weight, distortion speaks truth, and every ambient pulse feels like a heartbeat echoing in darkness. Deeply influenced by his roots in black-and-white photography and his studies in musique concrète under Bernard Fort, Blinded is less a collection of songs and more a sensory installation meant to be felt as much as heard.
Tracks like “Babi Yar” and “Black Clouds” (featuring Frank Zozky) layer field recordings, industrial textures, and minimal melodies to evoke both desolation and catharsis. “Charlotte” and “I Did Not Kill Her” feel like sonic monologues, full of unresolved tension and ghostlike stillness. The closer, “Et Si Un Jour” featuring Paz, is quietly devastating, a whispered farewell in a crumbling landscape.
Blinded explores metaphorical blindness, not what’s absent, but what we refuse to see. It’s a record for late hours and deep introspection, best experienced in solitude. Bastien Pons doesn’t just compose music; he curates emotional space. Blinded is stark, tactile, and undeniably human.