Abstract Visuals and the Amplification of Music

The question “What the hell is this?” pops into my head more frequently than I can count. I am, however, able to track how many times I think “What the f*** is this?” With more urgency and power behind it, the latter question is warranted by a truly strange event during my day. On this day, it was watching the music video for “You’re Too Precious” by James Blake.

The song itself, released on April 24th, is a swaying electronic ballad, layered with his own singing voice and topped with a chopped sample of the track’s title. The visuals follow an amorphous blob as it transforms into various objects, people, and abstractions; this is a rather fitting visual given Blake’s last release was entitled Assume Form. Encapsulating the tenderness of the track, the slow moving evolution of the blob lulls me into the cocoon of sound on the single. As the environment changes around the amorphous blob, it stays in the center of the screen, continually evolving. There is a rather profound lesson to be taken away from this: the world moves very quickly around us, and it’s our responsibility to change along with it.

Proselytizing aside, the visuals accomplished their job of engaging the viewer. But why did James Blake, or a number of other artists for that matter, choose a formless and abstract visual to accompany his work?

For one, it grabs the attention of the viewer. In the case of James Blake, you are drawn in immediately by the animated train puffing “you’re too precious”. Humans have a cognitive bias for finding/making connections, and we watch this video to look for any semblance of story, which we are ultimately denied. Blake isn’t the first to use an abstract visual for this reason. In 1986, Peter Gabriel used this tactic for the single “Sledgehammer” from So. The musical zeitgeist of 1986 was dominated by MTV, and channel surfers would certainly take pause as a frozen bust of Peter Gabriel is slowly melted by jets of fire. The video for “Sledgehammer” was one of the most popular on the channel, and it helped propel the success of the single on the charts. Note, however, that between the two videos, Gabriel’s stops you dead in your tracks while Blake’s sensually lulls you into the world of the video.

Secondly, you don’t have to bother with all of that linear story business. Both of the videos previously mentioned owe a debt of gratitude (especially Blake) to The Beatles for Yellow Submarine. The development of Yellow Submarine as an animated feature sprung from the band members wanting to do as little work as possible, only wishing to fulfill their contract with United Artists, and the music took precedence over any other aspect of the production. As a result, the film follows an at-best tenuous storyline about Blue Meanies, Pepperland, and Jeremy Hillary Boob, Ph.D. Ask yourself, though, do you watch Yellow Submarine for the story? No. And that’s my final point.

Abstract visuals amplify the experience of the music without taking precedence. When Michael Jackson shook the world with his music video for “Thriller”, the song became inseparable from the visuals, each blare of the chorus accompanied with a mental image of the red jacket. But that isn’t the case with abstract music videos. In the case of Yellow Submarine, the psychedelic animations justify the quirky songwriting of Ringo Starr; the stop-motion style of “Sledgehammer” emits a sense of motion which urges the viewer to dance. And, where this had all started, the visuals for “You’re Too Precious” invites the viewer into a quiet, idiosyncratic world where the song would be considered a run-of-the-mill ballad.

And, with all of these visuals, I had the same thought: “What the f*** is this?”