Album Review/ Avant Garde : Bastien Pons’ ‘Blinded’

The music of Bastien Pons has a deep sensory appeal. So much so that it bleeds into your own reality, filling up your spaces and then defining them immersively. He creates moving frames of a scene, crafting them with slow moving textures, profound noise, and a contemplative poignancy that is addictive. In his debut album, ‘Blinded’, the artist “meditates on perception, blindness (literal and symbolic), and the tactile nature of sound.” As a photographer, he transfers his visual prowess and visionary lenses to his musical style. The result is an abstract sound machination that feels like it could be from the cryptic past or the surmounting future. The meeting of ambience with moments of surreal exploration, sonic experimentation, all give rise to hypnotic imagery that takes over. 

‘Babi Yar’ introduces the album. It’s running footage that feels mundane in the moment, but you know it’s evolving into something big. There is a darkness and a depth, a mysterious, slow burn energy, a build up that can be eerie. Ethereal vocals are sent into this space colliding with industrial agents and sparkling debris. There is something dystopian about the song and the images that form in your head swirls with this energy, these emotions. A whole new language without words. ‘Black Clouds’ features Frank Zozky. This one is also cast under a brooding grey sky of musical sensibilities. But there is an emphatic groove, a lamenting vocal line, a gusto that differentiates it from its predecessor. 

‘Blinded’ is up next. The title song that spearheads the stylistic peak, grandeur of the artist. With middle eastern vocal work that spreads across the vast soundscape. Like clouds spreading out and smearing the sky, the vocals spill with such a deep and powerful presence. ‘I Did Not Kill Her’ is a simmering song. For the most part, its landscapes are levelled, and in the process of forming, thinking, contemplating. 

‘One Minute of America’ has a progressive build, a sort of visionary, dynamic and electric flow. When viewed in the context of the rest of the songs, it seems as though it is made ironically. You can sense a lot of satire. ‘Charlotte’ and ‘Et Si Un Jour’ are both similar in style. They have atmospheric elements and a lot of industrial influence and style. Lot of stories built on that, a lot of imagery, scrap scenes, and gritty frames. 

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The album is available for streaming on popular sites like Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, and Amazon Music! 

You can listen to ‘Blinded’ by Bastien Pons here -