"Blinded" By Bastien Pons: An Immersive Exploration of Sound and Stillness

With "Blinded", French sound artist and photographer Bastien Pons presents a debut album that is less about music in the traditional sense and more about architecture in sound seven immersive pieces that whisper, groan and dissolve like shadows in fog. This masterpiece was set to be released on 11th June, 2025. This is not an album for passive listening; it's a slow, deliberate descent into sonic liminality.

Built from field recordings, ambient decay, processed textures and ghostlike fragments of voice, "Blinded" resists classification. These aren’t songs, they are environments, each shaped by Pons’ masterful restraint and deep awareness of silence. The influence of musique concrète is tangible, as is his photographic sensitivity to contrast and texture. Listening to "Blinded" feels akin to watching black-and-white film grain emerge under red light in a darkroom, tactile, haunting and ephemeral.

Pons refuses to conform to the streamable, skippable norms of modern consumption. Instead, he invites stillness. Each track demands that the listener stay, listen deeply, and dissolve into the ambient ruin. Through the influences of artists such as Art Zoyd,Coil, Lustmord and many others, he develops a personal, grainy language that speaks to presence, silence and memory. Pons speaks in a distinct, grainy dialect of noise and memory.

In "Blinded", sound becomes matter, and silence becomes its equal partner. It’s not a comfortable listen, nor is it meant to be. This is music as presence, raw, minimal and physical. For those willing to surrender to its quiet gravity, "Blinded" offers a rare, slow-burning kind of transcendence.