James Blake: The Sound of Silence (Simon & Garfunkel Cover)
“Hello darkness, my old friend / I’ve come to talk with you again”: the iconic lyrics from Simon & Garfunkel’s timeless 1964 hit “The Sound of Silence” are now sung by James Blake in a cover version. He ended his two-hour BBC Radio 1 Residency show this week with the tune, saying on air, “I think when Paul Simon and Garfunkel wrote this, they said something along the lines of, it was about the breakdown of communication. And one New Year’s Eve, I had a friend of mine sadly pass away and previous to that, the things he had been saying to me sounded like an attempt to reach out to people. I thought that after that happened, this seemed to be the only song that could represent how I felt at the time. So this song is dedicated to Ryan.” Blake’s contemporary rendition prominently features his trademark choral harmonies plus what sounds like an ambient recording.
