Buzzard and Kestrel — James Blake
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Buzzard and Kestrel – James Blake
Amazing Moments in Timbre | Timbre and Orchestration Writings
by Jeremy Tatar
Published: February 29th, 2020
A snare drum pounds relentlessly for the first sixty seconds of James Blake’s “Buzzard and Kestrel,” punctuated by random swoops of vocoderised voices, the occasional handclap, and an intermittent sub-bass almost at the edge of hearing. As the drum pattern repeats again and again, its reverberation steadily grows until the entire track is blanketed in a continuous sizzle. At its peak, around 0:56, the drum’s attacks are almost completely swallowed by their own echoes, the reverb an unremitting rush in our ears.
Then, something amazing happens.
Like coming up for air after a deep dive underwater, the echoes surrounding the drum pattern suddenly disappear. As our heads break the surface, the drums can now be heard with crystalline clarity; they are close, dry, and immediate. Four beats later the song’s beat drops, and the track begins in earnest.
In her influential article “The Paradox of Timbre” (2002), ethnomusicologist Cornelia Fales describes the importance of timbre for furnishing listeners with accurate information about their surrounding environment. “Not only does timbre carry the most information about a source and its location,” she writes, “but of all parameters of music, it also carries the most information about the environment through which the sound has travelled” (57). I hear a particular manifestation of this phenomenon in “Buzzard and Kestrel,” and Blake’s masterful manipulation of environmental space around the listener is what makes this timbral moment so striking.
Playing on the relationship between reverberance and our perception of the size, shape, and composition of the space in which these reverberations occur, the first minute or so of “Buzzard and Kestrel” tells a distinct story through a sequence of different sensations. One version of this story could be as follows: you are standing in a small, non-reverberant space with a sound source nearby. Gradually the size of the space expands, and echoes of the sound source begin to bounce from its walls. As the space seems like it cannot get any larger and the echoes threaten to overwhelm you, you look around and to your side you find a small door. You exit the now-cavernous space through this door, and as you cross its threshold the thunderous echoes suddenly dissipate. But though the reverberation has gone, the initial sound stays with you, like a thought that you cannot escape from. Listen to “Buzzard and Kestrel” once more with the story in mind, and see if you can imagine this space-expanding sensation.
Using a tool called a spectrogram, which visualises the spectrum of different frequencies present in an audio file over time, we have a different, perhaps less fantastical method of exploring this reverb “blanket” as it emerges over the progression of the track. The figures below show three moments from the track’s opening. Figure 1, at timestamp of 0:00 Audio Example 2, is the drum pattern as first heard by the listener:
Figure 1: Spectrogram of “Buzzard and Kestrel”, 0:00–0:04.
Figure 2, some 50 seconds later, shows a uniform white haze beneath 16,000Hz. This is the sizzle of reverb, a mist that gently covers the drum pattern.
Figure 2: “Buzzard and Kestrel,” 0:48–0:52. The white haze beneath 16,000Hz marks the reverb of the drums.
Finally, in Figure 3, we can see the moment that this blanket is lifted, around 1:05 of Audio Example 4
Figure 3: “Buzzard and Kestrel,” 1:02–1:09.
But do these visual representations really capture what it feels like to listen to “Buzzard and Kestrel”? What do they tell us about this music that our perceptions don’t, but more importantly, what do they miss?
About James Blake
In 2010, James Blake was a 22-year-old English musician who was more likely to be confused for the American tennis player than recognised for his music. By 2020, however, Blake has become a critically acclaimed producer and songwriter, and has collaborated widely with artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Frank Ocean, Chance the Rapper, and Beyoncé. “Buzzard and Kestrel” is the second track of his debut EP The Bells Sketch, released on the London-based dance label Hessle Audio. Although Blake’s work has moved somewhat away from the dubstep-based sound that characterised his early EPs and eponymous debut album (2011), many traces of this club aesthetic remain in his music.
by Jeremy Tatar