In "One Minute of America," French sound artist Bastien Pons uses a single found recording, just 60 seconds of life on American streets, as the basis for a vast and introspective canvas. A student of musique concrète under Bernard Fort, Pons treats sound the way a photographer would treat light and shadow, texture, contrast, and emotion. The end is not just a track, but a sculpture that moves in space.
The piece begins in near-quiet footsteps, some passing voices, a faint hum of life at a distance. It's the sort of moment you might usually overlook, but under Pons's hand it becomes a portal. Slowly, a slow, dark pulse takes over a heartbeat that doesn't propel but instead grounds the mood. Out of its midst, dim harmonics and industrial murmurs rise and recede to form a space that's at once estranging and familiar, like strolling through another person's memory.
The influence of Lustmord, Art Zoyd, Swans, and Coil can be felt, as can Pons's use of French-language field recordings. Still, even when working with borrowed source material, this is the sound of his imagination, grainy and tactile yet emotionally resonant. Everything is placed with careful consideration, allowing silence to breathe between sounds. As that minute dissolves, time seems to swell, evidence that the tiniest fragment can enclose a whole world.
"One Minute of America" is not so much a composition as a meditation. On place, on listening, on the subtle power of what goes unheard. Pons encourages us to stop for a second and listen to the beautiful within the banal, because who knows, we may be able to see, if only for an instant, all that infinity that surrounds anything.