Bastien Pons releases journey between silence and shadow "Blinded"

The black and white photographer and French sound artist Bastien Pons now steps to the forefront with his debut album "Blinded". A masterful meld of sound and vision, the seven-track, 49-minute album ushers listeners into a universe where perception, time, and silence melt away across haunting, transfixing panoramas. Pons has learned not to think of sound in terms of melody or rhythm but as texture, expression, and contrast. 

"Blinded" dispenses with the independence of song to instead focus on territories that converge, breathe, and dissolve. The album reads like a moving series of black-and-white photographs that reveal hidden dimensions and shadowed corners in the mind. Every track is a vignette that explores the emotional burden of memory and the fragility of perception. Right from the get-go, we are taken on a ride that never lets you settle before pulling the rug out from under you. Field recordings, drones, treated textures, distorted vocal hints, and ambient residue in a tension between intimate and alien atmospheres. 

Among the standouts are "Babi Yar" and "Charlotte," where Pons's ability to transform everyday elements into powerful emotional statements impresses. "Babi Yar" haunts with a deadened calm that retains its grip long after the track concludes. At the same time, "Charlotte" moves between beauty-pinched fragility and quietly persistent anxiety. However, these extremes are only symbols of the album's broader engagement with silence as an animate force.

"Blinded" is not meant to comfort. Instead, it's an attention grabber that requires the listener to enter into a world where sound, more than the words or music at hand, becomes a means for reflection, confrontation, and emotional realization. Pons is connecting the worlds of hearing and vision, turning listening into something visceral, almost cinematic. A stunning debut from Bastien Pons that speaks to the way sound can trigger memory and emotions beyond the constraints of language or melody. For those who dare to be led through the cross-structure of silence and sound, light and darkness, Blinded is a highly personal adventure.

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