“BLACK CLOUD” By Bastien Pons Ft. Frank Zozky

“Black Cloud” by Bastien Pons is one of the most haunting and immersive highlights of his debut album, “Blinded.” The release of the track’s official video enhances the already powerful audio experience. Available on global streaming sites such as YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, and Bandcamp, this piece continues Pons’s vision of integrating sound and vision as a single emotional experience. For those who enjoy music as an immersive experience rather than a fleeting distraction, “Black Cloud” offers the unique experience of capturing a Sisyphean struggle, as the listener is asked to submit to a paradox of stillness and unease.

From the first seconds, the track is designed to exceed all expectations of ambient or industrial music. There is no guiding melodic flourish. There is only a mantra-like vocal presence, pulsing and reverberating through a heavy, static tapestry of shifting sonic debris. This is a storm, not announced by the thunder, but by an unseen, stormy presence and pressure; the chaos is there, waiting. Pons sculpt sounds as a physical environment. Grainy, sculpted textures rub together, breath is buried under the distortion, and tension is suspended waiting for a climactic release. It is as if one is listening to someone, privately, processing intricate emotions in real time.

The latest black-and-white visual metaphorically defined architecture demonstrates the deeply angled emotional architecture in stark focus. Intently directed, the video transforms clouds from the sky’s backdrop to the main focus. Impressionistic layers of light and shadow painted the scene, and sonically evoked the contrast of presence and absence. Each frame was developed like a photographic plate in a dark room, revealing just enough to invite and tempt deeper consideration. The video’s landscapes of clouds evoke a feeling of claustrophobia. The calm weight and the track's calm juxtaposition close the world in on itself, evoking a sense of stark clarity. Bodiless calm. Pons embraced ambiguity and the world.

The pairing of audio and visual reinforces Pons' foundations in black-and-white photography and concrete music. The references and influences, from Coil and Lustmord to Art Zoyd and Swans, compose a sound texture language of restraint and silences. "Black Cloud" does not narrate a story; it implies a state of being to engage the audience on an emotional plane. The cinematography of the video enhances this focus with stillness and the pauses in between movement and moments. Much like the album it belongs to, this track rejects the commercial norm of digestible entertainment and embraces the slow, transformative art of immersion.

Let us recognize visual collaborator Lydia Fauconnet for her atmospheric visuals that provide the music with a bold identity. Her imagery captures the expanded emotional range of “Black Cloud.” She offers spaces where sound can inhabit shadows and where it can pressurize to rise into the sky. This type of work encourages the seamless back and forth of the experience of music and film.

“Black Cloud” does not aim to soothe, rationalize, or provide closure. The piece remains unapologetically tense. A disbalance of contradictions, it holds vulnerability and darkness, weakness and strength, and fragility and force simultaneously. This work encapsulates the vision of Bastien Pons. It is radical within a culture of overstimulation. Pons offers space. Space to listen intently. Space to feel uncomfortable. Space to be inside the storm.

Written by Manuel